What Is Causing the Rise in Immigrants Granted Asylum Under Biden Administration?

Austin Kocher, research assistant professor at Newhouse with the Transactional Research Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), was featured in the Time Magazine piece, “The Rate of Successful Asylum Cases Shot Up This Year. But That’s Probably Not Due to Biden.”

Kocher discussed the recent rise in immigrants being granted asylum under Biden’s presidency. He says, “The obvious inference is, oh, well this is because of Biden.” Kocher goes on to explain, ‘the Biden Administration has made no major policy changes that would influence how immigration judges rule in asylum cases.’ Kocher instead says that ‘the higher rate of asylum grants may be due to a confluence of factors.’