Data: Fewer immigrants get asylum in Ohio compared to national average
Ohio’s only immigration court has a higher rate of denying asylum claims than the nation’s average, according to data recently released.
The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a data-driven research institute at Syracuse University, released new information this week showing that 88% of asylum cases decided in Cleveland’s immigration court from October 2020 to September 2021 were denied.
That means that only 12% of applicants were granted asylum or another form of relief from deportation.
Nationally, 63% of asylum cases are denied on average, according to data from TRAC.
This statistic comes as no surprise to some Ohio immigration attorneys.
“It’s very disheartening going into the Cleveland court on our cases knowing the deck is stacked against us,” said Jessica Rodriguez Bell, a Columbus-based immigration attorney. “We’re going in and already preparing our clients for appeals the same day.”
As for why Cleveland’s denial rate is so high, Julie Nemecek, a Columbus immigration attorney, suggested that there’s a lack of cultural sensitivity to the plight of immigrants.
Some of her clients have been tortured in their countries and have traveled from Africa through Central America and to the border for safety. The judges, she said, don’t understand where immigrants are coming from.
“They don’t have a fair shot when they go in court and go in front of judges to present their case,” she said. “They come through the border and have lived in places that don’t have electricity and they land in Cleveland, Ohio, in immigration court.”
An adversarial system
During an asylum hearing, Department of Homeland Security attorneys cross-examine immigrants, challenging their memories and countless documents they’ve filled out, often dating years prior. Judges sometimes also question immigrants.
“The purpose of the asylum system is to protect refugees,” said Lara Nochomovitz, a Cleveland-based immigration attorney. “There is quite a lot of language in court cases talking about how it’s supposed to be a cooperative system. It’s adversarial, but it shouldn’t be so adversarial. People who have legitimate claims are being denied.”
Cleveland’s denial rate for asylum cases has surpassed the national average for years, according to Austin Kocher, an assistant professor and researcher at TRAC.
It was 72% in fiscal year 2015 and has increased since then, staying around 90% for the past three years, Kocher found.
As for why, Kocher said, “it’s complicated.”
“It’s really hard to say exactly why,” he said, but it likely has a lot to do with the makeup of the court’s judges and the types of cases they’re hearing.
“If (the docket) is made up of a lot of people who are from countries where it’s very difficult to get asylum or types of cases where the success rate is low, then that can drive the outcome,” Kocher said. “In the case of Cleveland, my sense is that the makeup of the court is driving a lot of this . ... In the past four years, five years or so they’ve added additional judges that seem to reflect the disposition of the administration that hired them, the Trump administration, in terms of being very reluctant to grant asylum.”
In Detroit, the asylum denial rate is a much lower 60%, which Kocher attributed to a different cultural landscape in the northern city.
Ohio’s immigrants are diverse: farmworkers, African asylum-seekers, Central Americans, refugees and more. Detroit, on the other hand, has a clearer identity as a hub for Middle Eastern refugees, Kocher said.
The backlog
Overall, the nation’s immigration courts also are dealing with a glut of cases, leading to a large pileup and hearings set years in the future.
The backlog was caused in part by former President Donald Trump’s enforcement policies, which led to all immigrants who crossed the border illegally being a priority for deportation, experts say.
During the last federal fiscal year — Oct. 1, 2020 to Sept. 30, 2021 — the Cleveland court got 2,816 new deportation cases, adding to its backlog for a total of 14,963 pending cases, according to TRAC.
Franklin County has the highest number of immigrants facing deportation in the state, at 4,152 pending cases, according to TRAC. That is compared to Hamilton County’s 3,277 pending cases and Cuyahoga County’s 1,083 pending cases.
The backlog has doubled since the beginning of Trump’s tenure in 2017, when 6,000 to 7,000 cases were pending, the data shows.
Immigration court works differently than criminal or civil courts and comes with unique challenges.
Immigrants are not appointed attorneys if they can’t afford one and are often entering a situation where they do not speak the language and proceedings aren’t explained. Although translators are typically available, they are called over the phone, their voices piped in through speakers in the ceiling.
Only about 17% of immigrants in Ohio with new deportation cases have an attorney, according to TRAC data.
Immigrants in Ohio actually have the seventh-highest odds of representation, compared with other states and the District of Columbia, according to TRAC. Rhode Island has the highest, with about 24% of immigrants with new deportation cases having representation. About 21.5% of Michigan immigrants have an attorney.
“Having representation in immigration court is extremely important,” said Maria Otero, a senior staff attorney for Advocates for Basic Legal Equality (ABLE), an Ohio-based nonprofit law firm that represents immigrants in deportation proceedings.
“Immigration law is complicated in itself. It changes so fast, I just don’t think it’s fair to ask people — who are new to the country, who might not speak the language, who might not understand proceedings at all or where court is and what they’re doing — to be able to defend themselves in a case where it could be life or death.”
Asylum seekers also have to prove that they need protection.
Many immigrants may also be suffering from trauma and post-traumatic stress from experiences in their native country, Nochomovitz said. And trauma-informed adjudication is not a discussion being had in the country’s immigration courts.
“It’s hard for Americans, people who live here, to fathom what asylum seekers have gone through to get here and what they have to overcome,” she said.