Asylum Grant Rate
40.3% of merits decisions
Asylum cases decided at Chelmsford Immigration Court
Immigration court · Chelmsford, MA
40.3% asylum grant rate across 2,160 merits decisions (FY2015–2025) - below the 48.2% national average.
Data updated 2026-06-21
The verdict
The Chelmsford Immigration Court granted asylum in 40.3% of the 2,160 cases it decided on the merits - below the 48.2% national rate.
The Chelmsford Immigration Court, based in Chelmsford, MA, decided 2,160 asylum cases on the merits between FY2015 and FY2025 - out of 73,383 total proceedings of all case types it handled. Of those asylum decisions, 870 were granted (40.3%) and 1,290 were denied (59.7%). The court has 17 immigration judges with enough asylum decisions to report, whose individual grant rates shape the court-wide average shown above.
Between fiscal year 2024 and fiscal year 2025, the grant rate at Chelmsford Immigration Court fell by 60.3 percentage points, moving from 100.0% to 39.7%. That window spans 2 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 CEO decided the most asylum cases here - 247 merits decisions (21.5% grant rate). The spread between the highest-grant and lowest-grant judges at this court is 71.9 percentage points - SAA at 86.3% versus YMC at 14.4%. 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
40.3% of merits decisions
Asylum cases decided at Chelmsford Immigration Court
Pending Cases
51,351
Open proceedings (all case types)
Asylum Decisions
2,160
Merits decisions, FY2015–2025
Asylum grant rate by fiscal year at Chelmsford Immigration Court.
| Fiscal year | Decisions | Grant rate |
|---|---|---|
| FY2024 | 19 | 100.0% |
| FY2025 | 2,141 | 39.7% |
17 judges with enough asylum decisions to report. Grant rates run from 86.3% (161 decisions) down to 14.4% (139 decisions) - a 71.9-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 SAA | 161 | |
| 2 | Judge AMO | 82 | |
| 3 | Judge JAH | 125 | |
| 4 | Judge HUL | 73 | |
| 5 | Judge NIF | 189 | |
| 6 | Judge JBY | 137 | |
| 7 | Judge AMS | 78 | |
| 8 | Judge GEP | 183 | |
| 9 | Judge JAZ | 39 | |
| 10 | Judge NYG | 86 | |
| 11 | Judge HAK | 97 | |
| 12 | Judge LSY | 89 | |
| 13 | Judge JMW | 137 | |
| 14 | Judge DDO | 129 | |
| 15 | Judge NSM | 162 | |
| 16 | Judge CEO | 247 | |
| 17 | Judge YMC | 139 | |
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.