Skip to content
Asylum BeaconU.S. immigration court data

Judge Karram, Omar Z.

Boston Immigration Court

EOIR data through August 31, 2026 · built September 11, 2026 · What these dates mean

Hearing cases: hearings are scheduled

New judge: the EOIR record was created May 28, 2026

Last hearing
August 31, 2026
Next hearing
September 1, 2026 · 906 scheduled in all
Last decision
August 31, 2026
First hearing
June 29, 2026

The record-creation date is the only date of a judge's appearance the release contains; it is not an appointment date. With few decisions so far, the grant rate describes sample spread rather than the judge's strictness.

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, a transfer and an extended absence cannot be told apart — only what the calendar shows is stated here.

How this is counted

Hearings are scheduled two to three years out, so an empty calendar for a working judge is rare; but for a judge who went quiet in the last few months it may simply be the data lagging. The lookup table's "active" flag is not used: it disagrees with the calendar for a third of judges.

6%

Asylum grant rate

of 66 decisions · FY2026–FY2026

95% interval: 2% — 15%

granted:
4
denied:
62
How this percentage is calculated

Grant rate = granted / (granted + denied). Administrative closures, withdrawals, abandonment and "not adjudicated" are excluded from the denominator. What is counted is a decision per proceeding, not per application: asylum, withholding and CAT protection are almost always asked for together, so withholding and CAT grants are counted separately from asylum. The U.S. fiscal year runs October 1 – September 30.

How this compares

  • This judge6% (66)
  • The whole court — Boston Immigration Court41% (33,182)
  • All U.S. courts33% (1,369,763)

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%2026

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

Show as a table
Grant rate by fiscal year
Perioddecisionsgranted95% interval
FY2026partial666%2% — 15%

By applicant nationality

Grant rate by nationality, largest volumes first
Nationalitydecisionsgranted95% interval
Brazil230%0% — 14%
Guatemala90%0% — 30%
Colombia650%19% — 81%
El Salvador60%0% — 39%
China40%0% — 49%
Azerbaijan40%0% — 49%
Haiti40%0% — 49%
Jamaica30%0% — 56%
Chile20%0% — 66%
Venezuela20%0% — 66%
Turkiye10%0% — 79%
Dominican Republic10%0% — 79%
Honduras1100%21% — 100%

Timing and waits

How long each stage of a case takes before this judge. Every figure is a median: half of cases are faster, half slower. Data as of August 31, 2026; these are past and current cases, not a forecast for yours.

this judgenationwide

How long decided cases took

from the NTA to the decision

limited data · cases decided: 66

48 mo
half of cases: 31—58 mo
Cases decided
66
Half of cases
31—58 mo
The whole court
28 mo

Cases decided this year may have begun a decade ago, so this is not a forecast for a case filed today.

The NTA is the charging document; serving it opens the case in court. The figure is a median, not a mean: durations have a long tail, and a few decade-long cases would pull a mean far from the typical case.

How long undecided cases have already waited

from the NTA to the data cutoff

33 mo
about the same as nationwidenationwide 34 mo
half of proceedings: 26—43 mo
Proceedings in the queue
1,059
Half of proceedings
26—43 mo
The whole court
39 mo
Nationwide
34 mo · half: 25—45 mo
Hearing set after the cutoff
87.9% (85.8% — 89.7%) · nationwide 85.5%

Decided cases and waiting cases are different cases: the first have already left the queue, the second are still in it, so these two durations can differ in either direction.

The queue counts proceedings with no decision yet in the release. It is how long people have already waited, not how much longer they will.

Shown separately is the share with a hearing scheduled after the cutoff: the rest have no future event in the release at all, and cannot be read as live alongside these.

When the nearest hearing is set

from the data cutoff to the nearest hearing

29 d
7.1 times shorter than nationwidenationwide 7 mo
half of cases: 15—59 d
Cases with a date set
876
Half of cases
15—59 d
The whole court
7 mo
Nationwide
7 mo · half: 2—15 mo
Time to the nearest hearing by hearing type and by custody
What is setcasesmedianvs. nationwidea quarter longerover a year out
Master hearing62321 d8 times shorter than nationwidenationwide 6 mo38 d0.0%0.0% — 0.6%
Individual hearing2544 mo2.8 times shorter than nationwidenationwide 11 mo5 mo0.0%0.0% — 1.5%

In the rows the figure runs to the nearest hearing of that kind, so it is never shorter than the overall one.

Under each share — the 95% interval.

Hearings set shortly after the cutoff have already happened by the time you read this. The count here is of cases, while the queue above counts proceedings, so the two figures need not agree. The horizon describes the docket, not the speed of the court.

Rows attached to cases already decided are excluded — the release keeps them, and with them the count of those waiting would be a tenth higher. The judge and court come from the schedule row itself: whoever will hold the hearing, not whoever the proceeding is assigned to. Cases where the person is detained have a hearing within days, the rest within months, and courts at detention centres consist almost entirely of the former. The median is only given from fifty cases up: below that it rests on two or three rows.

From a master calendar hearing to the individual hearing

from a master calendar hearing to the one set after it

limited data · hearings followed by an individual hearing: 166

4 mo
2.6 times shorter than nationwidenationwide 11 mo
half: 3—5 mo
Master calendar hearings in the year
566
Followed by an individual hearing
29.3% (25.7% — 33.2%) · 166 of 566
To the individual hearing, half of cases
3—5 mo
The whole court
17 mo
Nationwide
11 mo · half: 2—24 mo
    What was scheduled after a master calendar hearing: share of hearings and median gap
    What was scheduled nexthearingssharemedian gap
    An individual hearing16629.3%25.7% — 33.2%14.7% nationwide4 mo
    Another master calendar17430.7%27.1% — 34.7%52.9% nationwide5 mo
    Nothing: the proceeding is over10017.7%14.7% — 21.0%27.5% nationwide—
    Nothing: no hearing set yet12622.3%19.0% — 25.9%4.9% nationwide—

    Under each share — the 95% interval.

    The figures cover master calendar hearings over the last twelve months of the release and what was set after each of them. The shares describe hearings, not cases: one case passes through several master hearings in a year and is counted as many times.

    The next hearing has usually not happened yet: its date can be moved. A separate line shows after how many hearings nothing is scheduled — either the proceeding is over or the calendar has not been filled in, and towards the end of the window the second share grows simply because the calendar has not caught up. Cases where the person is detained move more than twenty times faster than the rest, and courts at detention centres consist almost entirely of them. A slot counts the cases of one judge at one time: you go to your judge's courtroom, not to the building. No hearing dates are shown here in any form. The median is only given from fifty hearings up.

    In absentia decisions

    Removal cases completed without the respondent in the room. This is not about a judge's strictness: attendance depends on whether the person is detained, whether notice reached them and whether they have counsel.

    38% of proceedings ended in absentia — 95 of 251.

    • This judge38% (251)
    • The whole court19% (239,810)
    • All U.S. courts19% (11,588,297)
    Share of in absentia decisions by fiscal year
    Fiscal yearProceedingsIn absentiaShare
    FY2025300%
    FY2026partial2489538%

    The denominator is every completed removal proceeding (RMV): other proceeding types almost never end in absentia. The headline share covers the whole history, while the table shows the latest fiscal years by the proceeding's completion date. An in absentia order can be challenged by a motion to reopen.

    Full statisticsMotions, adjournment reasons, appeals to the BIA, three-member panels and second rounds after a remand.

    Motions

    What the judge does with requests made along the way: continue the hearing, allow appearance by video, terminate the case, put it back on the calendar. Judges differ more here than in the asylum grant rate.

    357 motions decided in October 2021 — August 2026, 279 of them in the last twelve months. 58% are attached to the judge by the nearest hearing.

    Share of motions granted, by type
    MotionDecidednow / beforeGrantedSeptember 2025 — August 2026BeforeOctober 2021 — August 2025Nationallynow / before
    Motion for Video Appearance69078%67% — 86%—69%79%
    Motion to Withdraw as Counsel402795%83% — 99%—91%88%
    Motion for Continuance42912%5% — 25%—56%77%

    Under each share — the 95% interval.

    A dash means the window holds too few decisions to name a share; an empty recent column means the judge no longer decides motions of that kind. What the letters G and D mean, EOIR does not publish: there is no lookup for this field, and they are read from the behaviour of the cases.

    How this is counted

    The last twelve months and the years before them are never merged: motion practice changes faster than a case runs, and a single five-year number would average two different eras. A motion record carries no judge code of its own — it is taken from the nearest hearing by date, that is, from whoever was actually sitting on the case at the time; six motions in ten attach that way, the rest are credited to the judge of the proceeding, and the two methods disagree in one case out of five. The "nationally" column shows where judges genuinely differ: procedural motions are granted by nearly everyone nearly always.

    Adjournment reasons

    Why a hearing did not go ahead, and how far it pushed the case. The court assigns the reason itself; a hearing counts as adjourned when another one follows.

    Of 650 hearings with a stated reason in September 2025 — August 2026, 364 were adjourned (56%).

    Adjournment reasons: share of all adjournments and median days to the next hearing
    ReasonAdjournmentsnow / beforeShareSeptember 2025 — August 2026NationallyFollow-upMedian days
    MC to IC - merits hearing168046.2%41.1% — 51.3%12.0%10.2%100%12491–150309 nationally
    IJ completion at hearing73020.1%16.3% — 24.5%8.3%4.5%32%16424–35728 nationally
    Placed in trial queue65017.9%14.3% — 22.1%0.5%0.7%37%350164–367158 nationally

    The upper figure in a cell covers September 2025 — August 2026; the lower one and “was” cover October 2021 — August 2025.

    Under the share — the 95% interval; under the median — the quartiles.

    The reason does not assign blame: "respondent to seek representation" covers both a person looking for counsel and a court granting time to look. A dash means the window holds too few adjournments to name a share.

    How this is counted

    The recent window and the years before it are shown apart: adjournment practice changes faster than a case runs, and it is not only the frequencies that move but the reasons themselves, in different directions. Case-completion codes (8A, 8B, 8C) are separated from genuine continuances by behaviour rather than by wording: after them another hearing rarely follows, while after preparation continuances it almost always does. That is what the "follow-up" column shows, and a low value means "the case usually ended here", not "the adjournment failed". The median days figure is how far this reason pushed the next hearing; half the cases fall between the quartiles shown.

    What became of appeals to the BIA

    An immigration judge's decision can be appealed to the Board of Immigration Appeals. The key to this table is who filed: the same outcome means opposite things when the respondent appeals and when the government does.

    No appeals on the merits in this release

    How to cite this page

    Figures on this page belong to one monthly release and are replaced whole by the next. The release label and the data cutoff are part of the citation for that reason: without them the number cannot be checked later.

    Asylum Beacon. Judge Karram, Omar Z. EOIR Case Data, U.S. DOJ FOIA Library, release 2026-08, data through 2026-08-31. https://asylumbeacon.com/en/judge/OZK

    Methodology in full

    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 give legal advice. The release lags by roughly a month, so check ACIS or Respondent Access for your current case status. The source has known gaps, including among relief applications: if something is missing here, that does not mean it is missing from your case.