A simple, relatively unspoken reality exists within immigration law. Location can be the difference between winning and losing in removal proceedings, no matter whether the case involves an asylum claim, cancellation of removal, or any other asserted defense. TRAC, an agency dedicated to monitoring immigration judges' rates of asylum denials, recently published decision statistics for every immigration judge in America. You can check your immigration judge here.
The statistics tell a disturbing story. The story is one of preference to people who are lucky enough to live in certain cities. The often random fate of geographic location should not play a prominent role in their odds of success on an asylum application. But it clearly does. Consumers of immigration legal services, or attorneys looking to hire another lawyer to help a client in need of those services, can sometimes better their chances of success by simply.........moving.
There is no law or regulation that prevents a person from moving to take advantage of a better forum in the EOIR or agency context. A forum can increase the odds of success in several ways - immigration judges may be more disposed to granting application for relief, or better law might exist on a particular issue in a given jurisdiction. The latter is true because while immigration law is indeed federal, it is not uniform. There are many instances where federal appellate law differs from Circuit to Circuit in the morass of tangled laws and regulations that make up the black letter immigration and nationality law in the U.S.
The most favorable Circuits are the Ninth and Seventh, in that order (depending on the issue at hand). The lesson? If you live in the Midwest, consider moving to Indiana, Southwest Wisconsin or Illinois to avail yourself of the Seventh Circuit decisions and of the Chicago Immigration Judges, who are far more likely to grant an asylum case (and every other kind of relief in my experience) than the very conservative immigration judges in Detroit. Similarly, the Sixth Circuit, while showing signs of following its sister circuit in Chicago, is historically much less apt to remand a case to an immigration judge on appeal.
Immigrants often feel helpless in the face of removal efforts instituted by the government. Rarely is that true. Relocating to a favorable jurisdiction may make it more likely that relief is available.
