Immigration Judge SMR

Case Insights: Judge SMR

Immigration Judge SMR has issued 836 recorded decisions at the OTO in the DOJ EOIR dataset. Of those decisions, 478 resulted in relief granted (57.2%), 3 were denied (0.4%), and 355 fell into other dispositions such as administrative closures, changes of venue, or withdrawals (42.5%). That volume places Judge SMR among a moderate docket at the OTO.

The gap between the grant rate and the denial rate is 56.8 percentage points, which categorizes this judge's outcome pattern as roughly balanced 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 OTO 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 OTO 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.