CGRS's IJ Dashboard aggregates and shares information submitted by users of our TA program. The following sections provide information on how the data is collected and organized. Reach out to our TA team at CGRS-TA@uclawsf.edu if you have any questions.
Biographical data on Immigration Judges (IJs) was manually collected and matched from the following sources:
- EOIR Immigration Court Listing: IJ's current Immigration Court; full name.
- EOIR News and Information: press releases containing the month and year of appointment of new IJs, plus the appointing Attorney General. Where notices were not available through the News and Information search, they were often available online elsewhere.
- TRAC Judge-by-Judge Asylum Decisions in Immigration Courts: where information could not be found directly from EOIR, TRAC's individual judge profiles contain information on month and year of appointment and appointing Attorney General.
This information will be updated as new IJs are sworn in or existing IJs are transferred to different courts.
Information shared in the IJ Dashboard is primarily sourced from case and outcome information generated by CGRS's site users. A small portion of the information comes from decision information CGRS has identified through alternative sources, such as listservs or FOIA requests, which is entered by staff.
To access CGRS TA, users must first register an account, providing information about their organizational affiliation. Once they have been approved to access the site, the user can fill out a case intake. This form collects basic information about the case, which informs the kinds of TA materials the user can access (e.g., if a case is from Nicaragua, the user will be able to access Nicaraguan country conditions materials).
After an outcome in the case has been rendered, users can return to our site and fill out a form to report their outcome. This form collects specific information about the decision: procedural stage, jurisdiction, adjudicator, date, legal theory, decision rationale, and more. CGRS has collected more than 15k outcomes; however, many cases do not have outcomes. Therefore, outcome information shared in the IJ Dashboard accounts for less than 10% of the cases where CGRS has provided assistance.
The following data is shared in the IJ Dashboard and is sourced exclusively from cases and outcome information stored in CGRS's database.
| Field Name | Source | Field Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Country of origin | Case intake | Required | Information collected at time of initial case intake submission. User chooses from a standard list of 204 countries and territories, and can only choose one. |
| Date of decision | Outcomes form | Required | User provides date the case was decided in MM-DD-YYYY format. While interpretations vary, "date" is generally interpreted as either the date a written decision was rendered, or, in the absence of a written decision, the date that the oral decision was rendered. |
| Immigration Judge (IJ) | Outcomes form | Required | User selects from a standard list of 1,000+ current and former Immigration Judges. List updated when new IJs are appointed. All IJs are listed Last Name, First Name Suffix. Outcomes with no IJ specified are not included in the IJ Dashboard. |
| Count of outcomes | N/A | N/A | Count of total outcomes on file with CGRS from that IJ where a staff member has reviewed and indicated that the outcome is appropriate for inclusion in the IJ Dashboard. Count includes non-relief outcomes (e.g., terminations, MTR decisions) that do not have values for merits-related fields (e.g., protected grounds, denial rationale). |
| Basis of claim | Case intake | Required | Information collected at the time of initial case intake submission. On the case intake form, the field is called Types of Persecution. User chooses from a standard list of 31 options and can select an unlimited amount; the average case has 3 options selected. |
| Immigration court | Outcomes form | Required | User selects from a standard list of 81 courts and can only select one. The list is updated every time an immigration court is opened, closed, or moved. Each option in the dropdown is one physical location of a court - cities with multiple courts have separate listings for each court (e.g., Los Angeles has separate listings for Los Angeles West, Van Nuys, and North). This information is wholly user-generated; we have outcomes from more than one immigration court for 51% of IJs. |
| Relief outcome | Outcomes form | Required |
User selects one value from a list of nine different outcome types specific to immigration court, including, e.g., granted any relief, denied all relief, terminated, administratively closed, and decisions on bonds and motions to reopen. For the purposes of the IJ Dashboard, only grants and denials of relief are included in the pie chart. A granted case means a grant of any type of relief, even if another type is denied, e.g., if asylum and withholding of removal are denied but CAT is granted. A denial means all three types of relief were denied. |
| Age of applicant | Outcomes form | Optional |
User selects either minor (17 or under) or adult (18 or older), based on the applicant's age at the time of the outcome (not initiation of case). We also collect this information on the case intake form, but given that minors may become adults between the submission of the case intake and issuance of outcome, we ask on the outcomes form as well. This is a non-required field that was added to the form in January 2022, so this data is more sparse. For all outcomes included in the IJ Dashboard, 69.7% are adults; 1.07% are minors; and 29.2% are unknown. |
| Gender of applicant | Case intake | Required |
Information collected at time of initial case intake submission. User chooses one value: female, male, transgender female, transgender male, or non-binary. |
| Protected grounds considered | Outcomes form | Optional | User chooses unlimited values from the five grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion, and membership in a particular social group. As this field was added in January 2022, is optional, and is not relevant to every outcome (e.g., CAT-only cases), we do not have this data for every outcome. Where possible, CGRS staff has manually reviewed outcomes submitted before this field was added and updated this information if we have a written decision that specifies it. 43% of outcomes in the IJ Dashboard have this information. |
| Specific protected grounds | Outcomes form | Optional |
After clicking one or more protected grounds, users are offered two free-text fields asking for specific articulations and how they were decided on. Each ground has its own two fields; race, religion, political opinion, and nationality have Recognized and Not Recognized fields, while particular social groups have Found Cognizable and Not Found Cognizable fields. As these fields are optional, added in January 2022, and not relevant to every outcome (e.g., where an IJ did not make a specific cognizability finding), we do not have this information for every outcome. On the IJ Dashboard, free text inputted into this field is displayed in its raw form with some exceptions. CGRS staff reviews every outcome submitted before it is marked for inclusion in the dashboard to screen for any personally identifiable information (e.g., family name, name of persecutor), which is redacted before it is included. We also review information that is wholly irrelevant (i.e., anything inputted into the field that is not just the articulations as considered by the IJ). |
| Asylum denial rationale | Outcomes form | Optional |
Question is displayed if an outcome is either a complete denial of relief (i.e., not bond or MTR denials) or partial denial of relief where the user specifies that asylum was denied. User chooses unlimited options from set list of rationales for denial, e.g., nexus, credibility, bar to relief, discretionary determination, etc. Outcomes categorized as granted on the dashboard can involve a grant of non-asylum relief (e.g., asylum denied, withholding of removal granted), meaning asylum denial rationale information can be associated with a granted outcome. As this field is optional and added in January 2022, we do not have this information for every outcome. |
| Withholding denial rationale | Outcomes form | Optional |
Question is displayed if an outcome is either a complete denial of relief (i.e., not bond or MTR denials) or partial denial of relief where the user specifies that withholding was denied. User chooses unlimited options from set list of rationales for denial, e.g., nexus, credibility, bar to relief, etc. As clarified in the form update introduced in April 2025, this form refers to denials of statutory withholding of removal, not CAT withholding of removal. Outcomes categorized as granted on the dashboard can involve a grant of non-withholding relief (e.g., withholding of removal denied, CAT granted) meaning asylum denial rationale information can be associated with a granted outcome. As this field is optional and added in January 2022, we do not have this information for every outcome. |
| CAT denial rationale | Outcomes form | Optional | Question is displayed if an outcome is either a complete denial of relief (i.e., not bond or MTR denials) or partial denial of relief where the user specifies CAT was denied (while rare, some IJs find that an applicant meets the standard for asylum but not CAT). |
New outcomes reported to CGRS are not added to the IJ Dashboard by default: on a weekly basis, they are reviewed by a CGRS staff member to check for:
- Information that could personally identify an asylum seeker if shared, such as the name of the family in the protected grounds field;
- Obvious error that would impact the fidelity of CGRS's data, such as an outcome being reported for the wrong case or a grant of relief being reported as a denial; and
- In the case that the attorney reporting the case shared a written decision, the details of the outcome are compared against the decision in case any information was missed.
IJ biographical data is monitored for accuracy through the following measures:
- Page alerts for EOIR's court listing page: when a new IJ is removed or moved to a new court and the EOIR listing page is updated, CGRS staff receives an email alert. The information is then updated on the IJ's page.
- Email alerts from EOIR directly: when new IJs are sworn in or courts are opened or closed, EOIR usually sends a notice out to email subscribers.
- In the case that an EOIR notice is not sent, CGRS staff recieve Google alerts for a number of EOIR-related news phrases.
The data shared in the IJ Dashboard should not be considered representative, statistically significant, or predictive, as it is based only on outcomes reported to CGRS. While this enables us to share nuanced, narrative information not available from other sources, we encourage advocates to interpret the information in concert with publicly-available Immigration Court adjudication information from sources such as TRAC.