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Asylum BeaconU.S. immigration court data
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Judge Mendez, Francisco

ANNANDALE — IMMIGRATION COURT

Hearing cases: hearings are scheduled

Last hearing
July 30, 2026
Next hearing
August 3, 2026 · 1,450 scheduled in all
Last decision
July 30, 2026
Now sitting at
ANNANDALE — IMMIGRATION COURT
Courts worked at: 2

Hearings scheduled here

Worked here before

The periods overlap, and that is not an error: a judge hears cases at a new court while still closing out old ones at the previous one. Each row answers "when did this judge work here", not "from when to when did they serve here".

Status is derived from the court calendar: whether the judge has hearings scheduled after the release cutoff. The EOIR release carries no personnel data, so retirement, removal, elevation to the BIA and extended absence cannot be told apart — only what the data shows is stated here. Hearings are scheduled two to three years out, so an empty calendar for a working judge is rare; for judges who went quiet in the last few months it may still be an artifact of the cutoff, which lags by about a month. The lookup table's "active" flag is not used: it disagrees with the calendar for a third of judges.

38%

Asylum grant rate

of 1,271 decisions · FY1985–FY2026

95% interval: 36% — 41%

granted:
485
denied:
786
How this percentage is calculated
Grant rate = granted / (granted + denied). Administrative closures, withdrawals, abandonment and "not adjudicated" are excluded from the denominator. The unit of count is a decision per proceeding, not per application: applicants almost always file asylum, withholding and CAT protection together. Withholding and CAT grants are counted separately from asylum. U.S. fiscal year: October 1 – September 30.

How this compares

  • This judge38% (1,271)
  • The whole court — ANNANDALE — IMMIGRATION COURT42% (34,999)
  • All U.S. courts33% (1,350,724)

This comparison does not adjust for which cases a judge was given: judges see different nationalities, different shares of detained respondents, and different rates of legal representation. A difference in percentages does not by itself mean identical cases were treated differently.

Trend by fiscal year

0%25%50%75%100%20192020202220242026

U.S. fiscal year: October 1 – September 30.

FY2026 is incomplete: the release covers only 10 of its 12 months. Its point is drawn hollow and the segment leading to it is dashed.

Years with fewer than 10 decisions are not plotted (10): at that sample size the percentage is noise. They remain in the table.

Show as a table
Grant rate by fiscal year
Perioddecisionsgranted95% interval
FY2026partial24915%11% — 20%
FY202518223%17% — 29%
FY20248465%55% — 75%
FY202315849%41% — 56%
FY202212667%59% — 75%
FY20214854%40% — 67%
FY202017029%23% — 36%
FY201924447%41% — 53%
FY201810%0% — 79%
FY201410%0% — 79%
FY201310%0% — 79%
FY201110%0% — 79%
FY200210%0% — 79%
FY200010%0% — 79%
FY199810%0% — 79%
FY199710%0% — 79%
FY199610%0% — 79%
FY198510%0% — 79%

By applicant nationality

Grant rate by nationality, largest volumes first
Nationalitydecisionsgranted95% interval
EL SALVADOR35940%35% — 45%
HONDURAS22526%21% — 32%
GUATEMALA1319%5% — 15%
BOLIVIA887%3% — 14%
VENEZUELA4643%30% — 58%
MEXICO417%3% — 19%
NICARAGUA3855%40% — 70%
TURKIYE3675%59% — 86%
PERU339%3% — 24%
CHINA3294%80% — 98%
ETHIOPIA3093%79% — 98%
COLOMBIA2544%27% — 63%
AFGHANISTAN2592%75% — 98%
MAURITANIA1414%4% — 40%
CAMEROON1385%58% — 96%

How long a case takes

How long it took from service of the NTA to the decision on the application, for the cases this judge has already finished.

28 mo

median

half of cases: 19—53 mo

based on 1,271 cases

NTA-to-decision duration by fiscal year
Decided inCasesmedianhalf of cases, mo
FY202624926 mo22—31
FY202518221 mo17—25
FY20248430 mo15—68
FY202315857 mo35—75
FY202212649 mo38—70
FY20214856 mo32—82
FY202017038 mo22—56
FY201924423 mo12—34

Duration runs from the NTA date (charging document served) to the decision on the application. Median, not mean: the distribution has a long right tail. Cases decided this year may have begun a decade ago, so duration by year of decision is not a forecast for a case filed today.

The queue

Cases with no decision yet. A different figure from the duration of completed cases: quick cases leave the queue first, so the long ones accumulate among those still waiting.

987
cases waiting
29 mo
already waited, median
  • Half have waited between 10 mo and 54 mo.
  • 915 (93%) have a hearing scheduled later than the date this data was collected. The rest have no upcoming event in the release.

The queue counts proceedings with no decision in the release. The figure runs from the NTA date to the release cutoff — it is how long people have already waited, not how much longer they will. Shown separately: how many have a hearing scheduled after the cutoff. The rest have no upcoming event in the release and should not be read alongside live cases.

What became of appeals to the BIA

An immigration judge's decision can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. This is what the Board did with those appeals. A high share of reversals and remands tells a different story than a low grant rate alone.

What became of appeals to the BIA
BIA decisionAppeals
Dismiss Appeal/Affirm IJ's Decision116
Remand56
Denied14
Summary Affirmance10
Summary Dismissal (e) no brief9
ROP Returned to Court to correct deficiency8
Withdrawal of Appeal6
Terminate-DHS PD5
Termination5
Lacks Jurisdiction - BIA2
Summarily Dismiss1
Dismiss Soriano1
Administratively Closed1
Dismissed (Grant V/D 30 days)1
Summary Dismissal (G) untimely or waived appeal1

Data comes from the monthly EOIR Case Data release (U.S. DOJ FOIA Library). This service is not affiliated with the U.S. government and does not provide legal advice. The data lags by roughly a month; for current case status use ACIS and Respondent Access. The source is known to have missing records, including relief applications — absent data does not mean it is absent from your case.