Immigration judge · Sterling Immigration Court
Immigration Judge CEL
83.9% asylum grant rate across 31 merits decisions - above the 48.2% national average.
Data updated 2026-06-21
- 83.9%
- Asylum grant rate
- 16.1%
- Asylum denial rate
- 31
- Asylum decisions
"CEL" is the anonymized judge code DOJ's Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) assigns in its public case-data release, not a verified public identity. EOIR does not publish immigration judges' full names in this dataset, so this code should not be read as confirming, or attributing these statistics to, any specific named individual. See our methodology for detail.
The verdict
Judge CEL granted asylum in 83.9% of the 31 cases decided on the merits at the Sterling Immigration Court - above the 48.2% national rate.
- 83.9%
- Asylum grant rate
- 16.1%
- Asylum denial rate
- 31
- Merits decisions, FY2015–2025
Case Insights: Judge CEL
Immigration Judge CEL decided 31 asylum cases on the merits at the Sterling Immigration Court between FY2015 and FY2025. Of those, 26 were granted (83.9%) and 5 were denied (16.1%). That volume places Judge CEL among a lighter caseload at the Sterling Immigration Court.
The gap between the grant rate and the denial rate is 67.8 percentage points, which categorizes this judge's outcome pattern as grant-leaning relative to national EOIR norms. Because every case before an immigration judge depends on nationality, relief type, representation status, and country conditions, these aggregate rates are not a predictor of any single future decision. TRAC Immigration and DOJ EOIR both caution readers to interpret judge-level rates as descriptive rather than prescriptive statistics.
The Sterling Immigration Court itself has multiple judges whose grant rates can vary widely, so the best way to contextualize Judge CEL's numbers is to compare against court-wide figures and against peers on the same bench. The court page for Sterling Immigration Court lists all sitting judges and their asylum grant rates, making side-by-side comparison of decision volumes and grant percentages straightforward for researchers, attorneys, and respondents.
Judges With a Similar Grant Rate
These are the immigration judges nationwide whose asylum grant rate is closest to Judge CEL's 83.9%, regardless of court.
Chicago Immigration Court
New York - Federal Plaza Immigration Court
Sacramento Immigration Court
Sacramento Immigration Court
Annandale Immigration Court
New York - Federal Plaza Immigration Court
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Explore PlainImmigration
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.
Every figure on PlainImmigration is rendered directly from federal immigration court records, no number is typed in by an editor. Judge statistics are computed directly from 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.