Miami has the largest asylum case backlog in the U.S. Here’s why.

An unprecedented 3.4 million cases are pending in immigration courts around the United States. These cases, which typically involve multiple hearings, often take years to be resolved.

And no court has seen this more than Miami-Dade, said Florida Lt. Gov Jeanette Nuñez.

"In Miami-Dade county, what we've seen is the immigration courts are facing the largest backlog of any court in this country, with 10% of the overall immigration cases," Nuñez said at a March 15 news conference. 

Nuñez added: "And, what’s worse, is that the overwhelming majority of those cases that are being addressed by the court, more than 90% of them lose their asylum claim."

Nuñez used the statistics to criticize the immigration system under President Joe Biden. 

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., attended the same event, held at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, to sign legislation that further restricts immigrants who are living in the state illegally, and increases penalties for driving without a license, belonging to "transnational" crime organizations or committing felonies after returning to the U.S. after a deportation.

When we asked the Florida’s governor’s office about Nuñez’s numbers, a spokesperson pointed us to news reports that covered Miami’s large case backlog but didn’t discuss the asylum denial rate.

When we looked into the data, we found that one of her numbers is right and the other is exaggerated.

Under immigration law, people seeking asylum in the U.S. who cross the border illegally must prove they have a credible fear of returning to their home country. Immigration officials interview asylees to determine whether they have a credible fear. After that, authorities may let them into the country. 

Some migrants are kept in detention as their requests move through immigration court; other migrants are released. From there, migrants can apply for asylum formally and go through the court proceedings, where they may be approved, denied or offered some other protection.

These cases take time.

The Miami Immigration Court has a backlog of about 290,000 pending cases, according to February data from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). 

That makes up almost 10% of immigration cases in the U.S., and represents the largest docket in the country. New York City’s court is second, with about 240,000 cases backlogged.

Miami’s caseload has grown steadily over the last decade before surging in the last few years, in line with the national trend, the database shows. The single court currently has about the same number of cases that were pending in all immigration courts across the United States  in 2012.

What about the rest of Nuñez’s claim — are more than 90% of asylum claims rejected?

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No, that’s too high, said Austin Kocher, a Syracuse University researcher and professor who helps oversee the TRAC data.

In Miami, asylum claims were denied in about 73% of the 67,000 cases that the court decided since 2000. 

So far in the 2023-24 fiscal year that started in October, the Miami court had an average rejection rate of 67%. That’s higher than the national average of 50%, Kocher said.

People detained at the Miami-Krome immigration detention center have a 92% denial rate. 

Kocher said it’s not uncommon for detainees’ cases to be denied at higher rates, and added that Krome has "far, far fewer cases" than the main Miami court. The center is used to detain immigrants who have been arrested for violating immigration laws and are awaiting removal proceedings. Some immigrants are subject to mandatory detention for a specific criminal conviction; others might be considered a flight risk. The Krome center has about 530 pending cases. 

Asylum cases can be closed for multiple reasons that are unrelated to the cases’ merits; the denial rate doesn’t account for these situations.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys sometimes use prosecutorial discretion to close or pause removal cases for a number of reasons, including a lack of resources or because the person doesn’t present a public safety risk.

"These determinations are not indicative of actual eligibility. Low numbers of asylum cases being granted is, in some ways, a product of how few resources and personnel are available to decide asylum cases," said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. 

"Certainly, some people aren’t eligible, and when they actually have their cases heard, they're found ineligible," she said. "But there are a lot of people who go on to get protection against torture, or some other form of relief that allows them to stay in the U.S."

Another way to close a case is to grant someone Temporary Protected Status, which is offered to help people who can't return to certain countries safely to avoid deportation, said Juan Caballero, an immigration attorney and director of the University of Florida’s Immigration Clinic. He said Temporary Protected Status comes up often in his Venezuelan asylum cases.

Caballero said approval and denial rates can vary widely among judges. A 2007 Georgetown University Law Center study noted Miami’s outlier status and recommended additional training for asylum adjudicators and improved selection criteria for immigration judges. 

Other factors, such as having an immigration attorney or a person’s detention status, have been shown to significantly affect asylum applications’ success rates, experts said.

Nuñez said that Miami-Dade immigration courts are facing the "largest backlog" of any court in the U.S. and that "more than 90%" lose their asylum claims.

The county has the largest immigration docket in the U.S. with about 290,000 cases pending as of February, representing close to 10% of all immigration cases in the U.S.

In Miami, asylum has been denied in about 73% of the 67,000 cases that the court has decided since 2000, with an average denial rate of 74% throughout Biden’s presidency.

Some asylum cases can also be closed or paused for lack of resources or when attorneys choose to prioritize other cases for prosecution amid the large backlog. The denial rate does not account for those situations.

Nuñez’ statement is partially accurate. We rate it Half True. 

PolitiFact Staff Writer Maria Ramirez Uribe contributed to this report.

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