Asylum Approvals Plunge From 46% Under Biden to 7.5% Under Trump, Immigration Court Data Show

The asylum free-for-all is over. In President Biden's last full year, immigration judges approved nearly half of the asylum claims they decided. Under President Trump, the approval rate has fallen to 7.5%.

That is according to the Justice Department's own numbers. The Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that runs America's immigration courts, reports that judges granted asylum 7,231 times in the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, from Oct. 1, 2025, through June 30. They denied it 89,740 times. That is about 12 denials for every grant.

In fiscal 2024, which ran from October 2023 through September 2024, the same courts granted 32,436 claims and denied 38,529. That works out to an approval rate of 45.7%. In fiscal 2023 it was 48.1%, the highest of the past decade.

More applicants walk away than win

The most striking number may be the one for claims that were never decided on the merits. In the first nine months of fiscal 2026, 92,081 asylum applications were marked abandoned, meaning the applicant stopped pursuing the claim. That is nearly 13 times the number of grants, and five times the 18,444 abandonments in all of fiscal 2024.

Put together, the agency's asylum decision table shows 254,680 asylum cases closed out in nine months, more than in all of fiscal 2022 or 2023 under Biden. Only 2.8% of them ended in a grant.

Fewer new claims, a shrinking pile

New filings have dropped too. Migrants filed 912,717 asylum applications in immigration court in fiscal 2024. In the first nine months of fiscal 2026, they filed 199,069.

The backlog Biden left behind is finally moving the other way. Pending asylum applications stood at about 2.32 million at the end of June, down from 2.53 million at the end of fiscal 2024. The overall immigration court caseload is down to 3.47 million cases from a peak of 3.92 million. Judges completed 660,343 cases in nine months, close to the 705,249 they finished in all of fiscal 2024.

Why the numbers changed

Supporters of tighter enforcement credit a string of rulings from the Board of Immigration Appeals, the Justice Department's top immigration court, that make it easier for judges to spot and dismiss weak claims early.

"Most asylum applicants admit they are economic migrants," Jared Culver, a legal analyst at the Immigration Accountability Project, wrote in an Oct. 20 analysis of the new precedents. "In order to provide asylum to those who genuinely need it, the frivolous applicants must be quickly weeded out and returned home."

Culver also warned that the changes "can be reversed by a new administration just as easily as they were implemented," adding: "Congress could and should codify reforms to the asylum system."

What the numbers measure

The approval rate here counts grants as a share of grants plus denials, the cases a judge actually ruled on. It leaves out abandoned, withdrawn and administratively closed cases. The fiscal 2026 figures run through June 30, the latest the agency has published. Fiscal 2025 straddles both administrations: it began under Biden in October 2024 and ended under Trump in September 2025.