Immigration Judge Granted Withholding to Our Mexican National Client

Great win for our client in the San Francisco Immigration Court. The IJ granted withholding for a Mexican National based upon membership in a particular social group, namely kinship.

The sticking point for the DHS Assistant Chief Counsel was safe relocation within Mexico. We argued that the client could not safely relocate anywhere in Mexico that her persecutor would not be able to locate her. Our office retained two wonderful expert witnesses that gave testimony and provided written declarations to the Court explaining why the persecutor could find her anywhere inside of Mexico.

DHS has reserved appeal and we will need to wait the 30-days to see what the Service is going to do. I am optimistic that we can prevail on any appeal because the record before the Court is so strong.

Syracuse University Report on Asylum Rates of Indiviudal Immigration Judges

The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University released information about the asylum decisions of 233 individual judges in the nation's special Immigration Courts. This report is available in an updated application developed by TRAC their website.

What is interesting to note, the overall denial rate of all asylum petitions in 53.2% during the latest period reviewed, 2006-2010. However, if the alien is not represented by an attorney, as 11% of all asylum seekers were, then that subcategory's denial rate rises to 88%.

In our immigration courts in San Francisco, IJ Murry leads the pack in denying over 90% of all the asylum cases he hears.

This is the link for the full statistics of all the IJ's across the country.

TRAC website