Immigration Judge SMR

Case Insights: Judge SMR

Immigration Judge SMR has issued 142 recorded decisions at the ELP in the DOJ EOIR dataset. Of those decisions, 94 resulted in relief granted (66.2%), 3 were denied (2.1%), and 45 fell into other dispositions such as administrative closures, changes of venue, or withdrawals (31.7%). That volume places Judge SMR among a lighter caseload at the ELP.

The gap between the grant rate and the denial rate is 64.1 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 ELP itself has multiple judges whose grant rates can vary widely, so the best way to contextualize Judge SMR's numbers is to compare against court-wide figures and against peers on the same bench. The court page for ELP lists all sitting judges and their recorded outcome rates, making side-by-side comparison of caseloads and grant percentages straightforward for researchers, attorneys, and respondents.