Asylum Grant Rate
37.3% of merits decisions
Asylum cases decided at Fort Snelling Immigration Court
Immigration court · Fort Snelling, MN
37.3% asylum grant rate across 8,212 merits decisions (FY2015–2025) - below the 48.2% national average.
Data updated 2026-06-21
The verdict
The Fort Snelling Immigration Court granted asylum in 37.3% of the 8,212 cases it decided on the merits - below the 48.2% national rate.
The Fort Snelling Immigration Court, based in Fort Snelling, MN, decided 8,212 asylum cases on the merits between FY2015 and FY2025 - out of 153,976 total proceedings of all case types it handled. Of those asylum decisions, 3,067 were granted (37.3%) and 5,145 were denied (62.7%). The court has 18 immigration judges with enough asylum decisions to report, whose individual grant rates shape the court-wide average shown above.
Between fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2025, the grant rate at Fort Snelling Immigration Court rose by 9.0 percentage points, moving from 29.0% to 38.0%. That window spans 11 fiscal years of reported data, covering shifts in bench composition, policy guidance, and nationality mix. The year-by-year table lower on this page shows the underlying annual case volume for every year in the series.
Outcomes vary substantially judge-to-judge. Judge MMR decided the most asylum cases here - 1,259 merits decisions (28.9% grant rate). The spread between the highest-grant and lowest-grant judges at this court is 61.9 percentage points - KLH at 65.7% versus WJN at 3.8%. These differences reflect case mix, nationality assignments, and docket type rather than any single factor, and they are why EOIR cautions readers against treating any judge's rate as predictive of an individual case.
Asylum Grant Rate
37.3% of merits decisions
Asylum cases decided at Fort Snelling Immigration Court
Pending Cases
30,357
Open proceedings (all case types)
Asylum Decisions
8,212
Merits decisions, FY2015–2025
Asylum grant rate by fiscal year at Fort Snelling Immigration Court.
| Fiscal year | Decisions | Grant rate |
|---|---|---|
| FY2015 | 255 | 29.0% |
| FY2016 | 243 | 28.4% |
| FY2017 | 278 | 28.4% |
| FY2018 | 257 | 25.7% |
| FY2019 | 765 | 36.7% |
| FY2020 | 1,055 | 30.4% |
| FY2021 | 199 | 29.6% |
| FY2022 | 664 | 45.8% |
| FY2023 | 1,164 | 35.6% |
| FY2024 | 982 | 51.5% |
| FY2025 | 2,350 | 38.0% |
18 judges with enough asylum decisions to report. Grant rates run from 65.7% (630 decisions) down to 3.8% (80 decisions) - a 61.9-point spread on the same bench. Rates based on smaller decision counts carry more statistical noise.
Judge names below are the anonymized judge codes EOIR assigns in its public case-data release, not verified public identities. EOIR does not publish immigration judges' full names in this dataset. See our methodology for detail.
| # | Judge | Decisions | Asylum grant rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Judge KLH | 630 | |
| 2 | Judge RFS | 186 | |
| 3 | Judge MAC | 1,007 | |
| 4 | Judge AKZ | 461 | |
| 5 | Judge BSI | 958 | |
| 6 | Judge KYA | 189 | |
| 7 | Judge KMI | 563 | |
| 8 | Judge SEC | 449 | |
| 9 | Judge RRW | 264 | |
| 10 | Judge JD | 238 | |
| 11 | Judge MMR | 1,259 | |
| 12 | Judge KWO | 330 | |
| 13 | Judge LDC | 287 | |
| 14 | Judge SM1 | 793 | |
| 15 | Judge GJW | 190 | |
| 16 | Judge JFP | 26 | |
| 17 | Judge MEC | 31 | |
| 18 | Judge WJN | 80 | |
Data from the DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) via FOIA bulk case data. Statistical information only, not legal advice.
Read our methodology - how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.
Source: U.S. EOIR, Immigration Court Statistics Immigration court outcomes by court and case type · 2025
Every figure on PlainImmigration is rendered directly from federal immigration court records, no number is typed in by an editor. This page draws directly on DOJ EOIR case-level records, no figure is typed in by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error.