Privacy

Search queries are not logged

Not in application logs, not in the web server, not in analytics. A record of who searched for what would be more sensitive than the EOIR data itself and would be subject to legal process. The search and case pages carry no counters, no third-party scripts, and no third-party fonts.

What does remain: the address of this site

Nothing is left on the server, but the visit itself is visible on your side. The address asylumbeacon.com goes into your browser history and into address-bar suggestions, and the domain name travels in a DNS query and in the clear while the secure connection is set up — so your provider and the owner of the network can see it. The “Close and leave” button closes the page and sends the browser elsewhere, but it does not erase history or traces at the network level. If anyone else uses the device, open the site in a private window and delete the address from history by hand.

No accounts exist

Access is granted by a signed token held in your browser. All that remains on the server is a quota counter in memory. There is no user list — nothing to subpoena, nothing to leak. To "log out", delete the token.

If you enter an email address

The address is used once, to send a sign-in link, and is not stored — neither in the clear nor as a hash. This path is optional: it raises your quota and lets one access work across several devices.

Address fields are never returned

ZIP code, city and address are used only as filters inside the query. They are absent from the API response and from the case page. You already know your own ZIP code, and you cannot learn anyone else's here.

Why two attributes from your documents

The candidate list does not open until two attributes confirmed by a document are given: the NTA date, a hearing date, a ZIP code, a month and year of birth, a date of entry. Citizenship, court, state, sex and language narrow the search but never count towards the requirement — a stranger knows them too, and we publish the court and judge lists ourselves.

The rule was rewritten after measuring the data. The earlier one — two attributes, one of them exact — protected large countries and left small ones open: citizenship plus an enumeration of birth months handed over the entire Kazakh cohort in 756 requests, seven records at a time, without once hitting the result ceiling. Requiring two documentary attributes raises the same work to about 1.7 million requests.

The exact number of matches is withheld too whenever the list is not shown: counters alone would let anyone study the composition of a group without ever opening it.