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The approval rate for asylum applications in the United States plummeted to 7% in February 2026 under the Trump administration, compared to the 50% approval rate during the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joe Biden, according to data revealed by The New York Times and confirmed by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
The decline represents the lowest level ever recorded in the history of the U.S. immigration judicial system, and it was not sudden: by August 2025, the rate had already dropped to 19.2%, half of the 38.2% recorded in August 2024, reported Telemundo.
In February 2026, asylum denials reached 79.6% nationwide, with 46,786 removal orders issued out of a total of 67,908 completed cases.
In Arizona, that same month, only 19 out of 365 applications were approved, equivalent to 5.2%.
A central element of the research by the New York Times is the systematic pressure that the Trump administration has placed on immigration judges.
Since January 2025, the Department of Justice has issued more than 52 policy memos directed at these judges, more than in the combined six previous years.
More than a dozen judges stated that they felt threatened with losing their jobs if they did not meet deportation quotas, according to the New York Times.
Furthermore, nearly in the first nine months of Trump's second term, reported Independent.
The removed judges had granted asylum in 46% of their cases; the newly appointed ones approve only 6%, and those who remained in their positions, 15%.
An analyst consulted by Noticias Telemundo explained the structural vulnerability of the system: "They are called judges, but they depend on the Department of Justice, so they do not have independence like the judicial branch; they are part of the executive branch, receive memorandums from the Department of Justice, and therefore are pressured to implement those policies."
The immigration judge Shuting Chen, dismissed in November 2025, described her colleagues as "puppets of the administration with the sole purpose of deporting as many people as quickly as possible."
Among the additional measures implemented by the administration to expedite deportations are the cancellation of the CBP One system for appointments at ports of entry, the revocation of humanitarian parole for over 532,000 migrants —including around 110,000 Cubans— and the training of 600 military lawyers as immigration judges.
The White House described the drop in approvals as a "correction" to the system, in a context where cities like Miami, with over 113,000 pending immigration cases, are facing unprecedented pressure on their immigration courts.
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