Skip to content
Asylum BeaconU.S. immigration court data

Judge Williams, Keith C.

MIAMI — IMMIGRATION COURT

Not hearing cases: nothing for over two years

Last hearing
August 23, 2007
Next hearing
none scheduled
Last decision
July 21, 2008
Courts worked at: 9

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.

12%

Asylum grant rate

of 3,510 decisions · FY1984–FY2003

95% interval: 11%13%

granted:
406
denied:
3,104

The period has closed

This judge no longer hears cases, so the figure describes FY1984–FY2003 — not what happens in the court today. Asylum rules and the mix of cases have changed since.

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 judge12% (3,510)
  • The whole court — MIAMI — IMMIGRATION COURT19% (104,037)
  • 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%198519871991199519992003

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

Years with fewer than 10 decisions are not plotted (1): at that sample size the percentage is noise. They remain in the table.

Show as a table
Grant rate by fiscal year
Perioddecisionsgranted95% interval
FY200323010%6%14%
FY200226112%8%16%
FY200120420%15%26%
FY20001807%4%12%
FY19991308%4%14%
FY199812415%9%22%
FY199713512%7%18%
FY19961538%5%13%
FY19952328%5%12%
FY199424014%10%19%
FY19931927%4%11%
FY199223913%10%18%
FY199126012%8%16%
FY199035614%11%18%
FY19891817%4%11%
FY1988435%1%15%
FY1987997%3%14%
FY19861167%4%13%
FY198513228%21%36%
FY198430%0%56%

By applicant nationality

Grant rate by nationality, largest volumes first
Nationalitydecisionsgranted95% interval
HAITI1,5657%6%8%
NICARAGUA83013%11%15%
CUBA29124%19%29%
COLOMBIA28915%12%20%
PERU10212%7%19%
GUATEMALA683%1%10%
EL SALVADOR655%2%13%
HONDURAS4010%4%23%
CHINA3711%4%25%
IRAN1338%18%64%
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC1267%39%86%
NIGERIA1127%10%57%
MEXICO1020%6%51%
ROMANIA100%0%28%
RUSSIA825%7%59%

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.

13 mo

median

half of cases: 7—20 mo

based on 3,510 cases

NTA-to-decision duration by fiscal year
Decided inCasesmedianhalf of cases, mo
FY200323016 mo1122
FY200226113 mo817
FY20012049 mo612
FY20001808 mo612
FY19991306 mo58
FY19981247 mo410
FY199713512 mo721
FY199615326 mo2031
FY199523221 mo1827
FY199424017 mo1420

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.

No undecided cases in this release.

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 Decision1,953
Remand762
Denied646
Dismissed (Grant V/D 30 days)436
Summary Affirmance423
Granted277
Withdrawal of Appeal159
Other113
Deferred Enforced Departure110
Sustain79
Summarily Dismiss78
Lacks Jurisdiction - BIA50
Dismiss as Untimely45
Termination44
Dismiss Soriano33
Temporary Protected Status33
SUMMARY AFFIRMANCE/VD32
Rejection21
Terminate-DHS PD17
American Baptist Church Settlement11
Summary Dismissal (e) no brief11
Summary Dismissal (a) inad reason on appeal10
SUMMARY DISMISSAL - BOTH (a) & (e)7
Continued5
Grant with no Remand4
Administrative Return4
Denied Soriano4
Coercive Population Control3
Dismissed as Moot2
Dismissed (Voluntary Departure Granted)2
AFD2
REV1
RET1
SPECIAL NACARA CONTINUATION1
Moot Bond1

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.