Immigration court · Seattle, WA
Seattle Immigration Court
According to the DOJ EOIR FOIA release (vintage 2026-08), signature read: a 64.9 pp judge-level grant spread is the widest lottery stamp on Seattle's bench. Merits volume is heavy-corpus at 17,027 decisions FY2015–2025 (#12 of 77).
Data updated 2026-09-05
- 37.8%
- Asylum grant rate
- 62.2%
- Asylum denial rate
- 43,926
- Pending cases
- 38 mo
- Time to decision
Seattle in one line
Seattle's asylum grant rate is 37.8% (mid-band grant rate, below the 48.3% national average) across 17,027 FY2015-2025 merits decisions (heavy-corpus volume).
- 37.8%
- Asylum grant rate · Mid-band grant rate
- 17,027
- Merits decisions · Heavy-corpus volume
- -10.5 pp
- vs. national average
- 64.9 pp
- Judge-level grant spread · wide
What this court's record shows
Seattle Immigration Court recorded 17,027 asylum merits decisions in the FY2015–2025 EOIR extract. Its 37.8% grant rate is 10.5 percentage points below the 48.3% national rate. That comparison describes the historical docket, not the likelihood of an outcome in a future case.
Wide judge lottery: 17.9% to 82.8% (64.9 pp) across 18 reported judges at Seattle. Case mix and assignment still shape the court aggregate.
Long-wait docket: 43,926 pending and 38 mo average recorded wait. Peer grids below place Seattle on grant-rate and caseload axes; methodology covers extract limits.
Court outlook score
Court outlook score
31/100
Seattle, weighted across 3 of 3 tracked dimensions
A weighted composite of asylum grant rate, time to decision, and backlog ratio against the full tracked-court corpus. It describes the historical docket, not the odds of any one case, and does not weigh legal representation, case type, or judge assignment.
- Asylum grant rate D 37.8%
Share of merits decisions granting relief, FY2015-2025
- Time to decision F 38 mo
Average recorded months from filing to decision
- Backlog ratio F 23.6%
Pending cases as a share of the court's own total caseload
EOIR bench spread roll
Grant-rate neighbourhood for Seattle
Nearest grant-rate peers for Seattle, where the 64.9 pp judge lottery is the standout bench stamp.
Seattle Immigration Court vs all courts by asylum merits caseload
Where this court's FY2015–2025 asylum merits-decision count sits among every tracked immigration court (inventory signal, not a quality ranking)
17,027 12th of 77 higher than 65 of 77 courts
Immigration courts, banded by asylum merits-decision count
Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more courts. The dashed line + filled bar mark this entry. Hover or tap any bar for its full count and share, and where it sits relative to this entry.
Source DOJ EOIR asylum merits decisions · FY2015–2025
Where Seattle sits: Slow & Tough
Each dot is one of the 40 largest immigration courts by merits decisions, split at the MEDIAN grant rate (47.5%) and median average wait (31.2 months) across this set. Seattle's own grant rate is 37.8% and its average wait is 37.9 months.
How to read this
- Fast & Favorable
- Favorable but Slow
- Fast but Tough
- Slow & Tough
Seattle Immigration Court's merits outcome mix
17,027merits decisions FY2015–2025
Grant rate over time
Asylum grant rate by fiscal year at Seattle Immigration Court.
| Fiscal year | Decisions | Grant rate |
|---|---|---|
| FY2015 | 386 | 37.3% |
| FY2016 | 788 | 37.8% |
| FY2017 | 799 | 34.8% |
| FY2018 | 854 | 40.7% |
| FY2019 | 993 | 27.5% |
| FY2020 | 608 | 28.6% |
| FY2021 | 930 | 33.9% |
| FY2022 | 2,010 | 31.0% |
| FY2023 | 2,572 | 36.7% |
| FY2024 | 2,717 | 42.2% |
| FY2025 | 4,370 | 43.3% |
The judge lottery at Seattle Immigration Court
18 judges with enough asylum decisions to report. Grant rates run from 82.8% (145 decisions) down to 17.9% (78 decisions) - a 64.9-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 TLF | 145 | |
| 2 | Judge JCO | 150 | |
| 3 | Judge TSC | 103 | |
| 4 | Judge CNF | 100 | |
| 5 | Judge PDF | 667 | |
| 6 | Judge HEW | 1,824 | |
| 7 | Judge JFW | 648 | |
| 8 | Judge GET | 39 | |
| 9 | Judge THS | 27 | |
| 10 | Judge BP1 | 3,770 | |
| 11 | Judge RBM | 2,699 | |
| 12 | Judge MIT | 1,233 | |
| 13 | Judge JTL | 37 | |
| 14 | Judge REY | 741 | |
| 15 | Judge DDE | 1,081 | |
| 16 | Judge SEJ | 1,725 | |
| 17 | Judge KSS | 1,791 | |
| 18 | Judge KJ | 78 | |
Nationwide courts with similar asylum profiles
Heavy-corpus peers for Seattle: ABS(grant-rate) and merits-volume matches outside the same state.
Similar grant rate (± asylum merits volume)
- Fort Snelling Immigration Court · Fort Snelling, MN · 37.6% grant · 8,783 merits
- Hartford Immigration Court · Hartford, CT · 38.0% grant · 5,835 merits
- San Diego Immigration Court · San Diego, CA · 38.2% grant · 7,941 merits
- Phoenix Immigration Court · Phoenix, AZ · 38.2% grant · 7,051 merits
Similar merits caseload (± grant rate)
- Baltimore Immigration Court · Baltimore, MD · 16,562 merits · 52.8% grant
- Orlando Immigration Court · Orlando, FL · 15,998 merits · 48.4% grant
- Santa Ana Immigration Court · Santa Ana, CA · 15,413 merits · 47.2% grant
- Newark Immigration Court · Newark, NJ · 18,739 merits · 48.9% grant
Why judge-level rates vary · Browse every tracked immigration court
Heavy-corpus court Seattle: 17,027 FY2015–2025 merits in DOJ EOIR FOIA data. Statistical information only, not legal advice.
Read our methodology - how Seattle's 17,027-decision EOIR court row 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. Seattle Immigration Court's outcome and grant-rate figures are recomputed live from the EOIR case-level extract on every request, never hand-typed. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of 2026-09-05.