denied!

This nifty site shows the total number of asylum cases granted by immigration judges in the U.S. and the percent approved vs. denied.

Note that (per a recent NY Times article which has now vanished into the archive) in New York between 2000 and 2005, Judge McManus had a denial rate of 9.8% while Judge Hom denied 91.4% of the asylum cases he heard, and Judge Vomacka denied 95.8%!

These extreme differences should put safely to bed the claim that asylum-seekers can count on any sort of fair and impartial process to determine the truth of their claims. (Immigration judges aren't even part of the judiciary, they're part of the same executive branch as the government attorneys laboring to send asylum-seekers back to their home countries.) The immigration judges have so much discretion to bend facts and law to fit their ideological preferences that asylum proceedings are often a sham. Due process? We’ve decided, through our legislators, that it is not particularly relevant to the life and death situations that many asylum-seekers find themselves in.