Court guides · DOJ EOIR FOIA · September 2026

Understand the court before the hearing

Plain-language explainers for process, counsel, asylum, judge assignment, backlog, detention, and nationality. Every figure on this hub is live SQL over the same EOIR merits file behind the rankings.

Data updated September 2026

77
Courts in the archive
48.3%
National asylum grant rate
89.4%
Top origin grant rate
92,313
Top origin caseload

Download the EOIR asylum statistics dataset (CSV) , open extract wired into this page's Dataset JSON-LD.

Informational only. Not legal advice. Every immigration case is unique. Consult a licensed immigration attorney.

Rate and volume diverge

Among origins with more than 200 decided cases, Soviet Union leads the grant-rate ladder at 89.4% while Honduras leads raw volume at 92,313 cases: the same EOIR cohort, two different ladders.

89.4%
Soviet Union grant rate
92,313
Honduras cases
48.3%
National grant rate
7
Guides in this hub

Live SQL over nationalities with more than 200 decided cases (same comparative idea as the court >500 floor). Dataset vintage: September 2026.

Origin grant-rate leaders

1. Soviet Union89.4%2. Belarus88.4%3. Uganda80.4%4. Russia79.9%5. Syria79.6%6. Ukraine78.9%7. China77.9%8. Kosovo77.7%
Asylum grant rate · more than 200 decided cases · DOJ EOIR FOIA

Origin caseload leaders

1. Honduras923132. El Salvador916263. Guatemala895444. Mexico753205. China492116. Venezuela429817. Colombia323378. India32151
Same cohort ordered by decided cases. Volume is not rate: a high-volume origin can sit well below the rate ladder.

Guide library

How the US Immigration Court Process Works

From Notice to Appear through final decision, the complete immigration court journey explained.

Right to Counsel in Immigration Court

Why representation matters, what the data shows about the outcome gap, and where to find free help.

Asylum in the US: The Basic Framework

Who qualifies for asylum, the one-year filing deadline, and what happens at an asylum hearing.

The Immigration Judge Lottery

Why your assigned judge may matter more than your case facts. The research on judge-level outcome variation.

Immigration Court Backlogs

Pending caseloads, what drives wait times, which courts run longest, and how backlog shows up in outcomes.

Detained vs Non-Detained Outcomes

How detention status affects access to counsel, case preparation time, and grant rates.

How Nationality Affects Outcomes

Why grant rates vary by country of origin and what the cross-court nationality data reveals.

Methodology

Guides cite DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Review case data released via FOIA (FY2015–2025 merits decisions). Rate charts use origins with more than 200 decided cases so tiny-n origins do not dominate the per-origin ladder. Origin names are the EOIR-coded country of origin, including historical codes.

When methodologies differ between sources or change over time, we note the variation inline. See the full methodology page.

Every figure on PlainImmigration is rendered directly from federal immigration court records, no number is typed in by an editor. Guide-hub KPIs and both ChartBars are live SQL over the portal DB (rate-ordered and volume-ordered nationality cohorts). No rate or volume figure on this page is typed by an editor. See our editorial standards & corrections policy, the methodology behind these numbers, or report a data error. Data current as of September 2026.