HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) - Judges in Hartford have decided the most asylum cases since 2003 and denied most of the requests.
The Day of New London, Connecticut reports the state’s two immigration judges decided 308 asylum cases in fiscal year 2018, the most since 2003, and denied requests at a rate not seen since 2008.
Data compiled by TRAC, a nonpartisan, nonprofit research center at Syracuse University, shows that Judges Michael Strauss and Philip Verrillo granted asylum 32 percent of the time in the most recent federal fiscal year.
In the previous fiscal year, they granted nearly half of 224 requests.
Mary Foden, an immigration lawyer with Hartford-based firm De Castro Foden, says there has been an influx of immigrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, and they are only eligible for asylum.
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