Immigration judge · Harlingen Immigration Court
Immigration Judge SME
According to the DOJ EOIR FOIA release (vintage 2026-08), signature read: lead-nationality share at n/a is the most distinctive stamp on Judge SME's EOIR row. Grant rate sits in the lower third of tracked IJs at 29.0% (below the 48.3% national average). Merits volume is thin-corpus at 124 decisions FY2015–2025.
Data updated 2026-09-05
- 29.0%
- Asylum grant rate
- 71.0%
- Asylum denial rate
- 124
- Asylum decisions
Judge SME in one line
Judge SME's asylum grant rate is 29.0% (lower-third grant rate, below the 48.3% national average) across 124 FY2015-2025 merits decisions (thin-corpus volume).
- 29.0%
- Asylum grant rate · Lower-third grant rate
- 124
- Merits decisions · Thin-corpus volume
- -19.3 pp
- vs. national average
"SME" 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.
This judge's merits outcome mix
124merits decisions FY2015–2025
Judge SME vs all tracked IJs by asylum grant rate
Where this judge's FY2015–2025 asylum grant rate sits among every tracked immigration judge (a leniency measure, not a quality ranking)
29% 1137th of 1696 higher than 559 of 1,696 judges
Immigration judges, banded by asylum grant rate
Each bar is a band; taller bars hold more judges. 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
Year-by-Year Outcomes
Historical asylum merits decisions for this anonymized EOIR judge code. Annual rows can be thin, and are not a forecast of any future case.
| FY | Decisions | Grants | Denials | Grant % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 100 | 16 | 84 | 16.0% |
| 2021 | 24 | 20 | 4 | 83.3% |
IJ rate-band chamber
Anonymized codes nearest Judge SME's grant rate
This chamber tracks nationwide IJs nearest Judge SME's 29.0% grant rate, a lower-third corpus rate, with THIN/LIGHT/FULL/HEAVY merits stamps on each peer row.
1,695 other immigration judges nationwide have a tracked asylum grant rate; the 6 closest matches to Judge SME are shown here.
Same-bench poles at Harlingen
Same-bench spread at Harlingen: Judge SME runs 29.0% - below the 48.3% national average among IJs with at least 20 merits here.
Nationwide judges with similar asylum caseload
Other thin-volume IJ codes nationwide, caseload peers when merits counts sit below the corpus median.
Lower-third grant-rate IJ code SME (29.0%) in DOJ EOIR FOIA data. Statistical information only, not legal advice.
Read our methodology - how Judge SME's 124-decision EOIR row is sourced, computed, and verified.
DOJ Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) FOIA bulk case data for IJ SME at Harlingen Immigration Court; lead-nationality share n/a. PlainImmigration computed grant/denial aggregates FY2015–FY2025; Merits volume is thin-corpus at 124 decisions FY2015–2025.
Judge SME's figures are computed from EOIR case-level records - lead-nationality share n/a, not hand-typed editorial values. justice.gov/eoir/foia-library-0
Every figure on PlainImmigration is rendered directly from federal immigration court records, no number is typed in by an editor. Judge SME's grant/denial/merits 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.