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Phoenix, AZ Immigration Court

15 judges · AZ

19.4%
Court Approval Rate
12,491
Granted
51,906
Denied
15
Judges

The Phoenix, AZ Immigration Court has an overall asylum approval rate of 19.4% across 64,397 decided cases. The court has 15 immigration judges. Data sourced from EOIR (Executive Office for Immigration Review).

How to Interpret This Court's Data

The Phoenix, AZ Immigration Court has an overall asylum grant rate of 19.4% in the current AsylumTracker dataset. Court-level statistics aggregate judges and cases assigned to that court, so the court average can differ sharply from any one judge's profile.

High-volume judge profiles at this court include Freerks, Lamonte S. (30,160 total cases), Richardson, John W. (28,217 total cases), and Sharda, Munish (8,940 total cases). The largest nationality groups shown for this court include Mexico (12,926 decided, 9.2% grant rate), Guatemala (3,861 decided, 1.6% grant rate), and Venezuela (2,299 decided, 11.6% grant rate).

Asylum grant rate is calculated as granted / (granted + denied). Procedural outcomes are separated so users can distinguish merits decisions from docket-management outcomes.

This page uses public EOIR records last updated 2026-07-01. The data is informational and should not be treated as legal advice or a prediction for any individual case.

Read how EOIR data works or learn how to compare asylum approval rates.

Areas Served by This Court

Based on the official EOIR ZIP-code assignment, the Phoenix, AZ Immigration Court is the assigned filing location for 304 ZIP codes. Main cities by state:

AZ — Phoenix, Mesa, Scottsdale, Glendale, Chandler, Gilbert, Flagstaff, Surprise, Peoria, Prescott, Tempe, Casa Grande, Lake Havasu City, Apache Junction, Avondale and 174 more cities

Not sure which immigration court serves your address? Enter your ZIP code in the AsylumTracker app's coverage map.

Judges at This Court

JudgeApproval RateGrantedDeniedDecided
Freerks, Lamonte S. 12.5% 3,142 21,904 25,046
Richardson, John W. 20.9% 4,781 18,089 22,870
Sharda, Munish 6.8% 468 6,398 6,866
Hollis, Wendell A. 36.0% 1,908 3,397 5,305
Cortes, John W. 8.7% 446 4,692 5,138
Gaz, Jennifer I. 9.7% 424 3,957 4,381
Habich, Paul M. 11.7% 503 3,798 4,301
Arellano, Silvia R. 11.0% 452 3,661 4,113
Cottor, Elizabeth A 8.4% 308 3,377 3,685
Guerrero, Marni 8.2% 259 2,881 3,140
Karlen, Melissa Beth 10.7% 316 2,635 2,951
Imburgia, Joseph S. 4.3% 131 2,951 3,082
Josephson, Kenneth 15.3% 23 127 150
Zhang, Xinzhe 3.7% 5 131 136
Kuipers, Benjamin 5.4% 6 105 111

Approval Rate by Nationality

NationalityApproval RateGrantedDeniedDecided
Mexico 9.2% 1,192 11,734 12,926
Guatemala 1.6% 63 3,798 3,861
Venezuela 11.6% 266 2,033 2,299
Honduras 1.7% 26 1,518 1,544
Colombia 1.9% 21 1,060 1,081
Nicaragua 6.5% 59 849 908
Cuba 27.4% 129 341 470
El Salvador 4.1% 18 419 437
Romania 8.1% 24 274 298
Ecuador 1.2% 3 238 241
Peru 1.7% 4 237 241
Turkey 8.2% 10 112 122
Russia 75.9% 63 20 83
Afghanistan 28.4% 23 58 81
Haiti 1.3% 1 74 75
China 46.3% 31 36 67
Cameroon 63.8% 37 21 58
Iraq 71.4% 40 16 56
India 19.6% 10 41 51
Dominican Republic 2.1% 1 47 48
Jamaica 13.0% 6 40 46
Kenya 58.1% 25 18 43
Nigeria 40.5% 17 25 42
Brazil 17.1% 6 29 35
Rwanda 51.7% 15 14 29
Philippines 23.1% 6 20 26
Guinea 15.0% 3 17 20
Democratic Republic Of Congo 21.1% 4 15 19
Iran 83.3% 15 3 18
Bolivia 0.0% 0 17 17
Pakistan 15.4% 2 11 13
Belize 0.0% 0 12 12
Panama 0.0% 0 11 11
Egypt 80.0% 8 2 10
Somalia 12.5% 1 7 8
Burundi 28.6% 2 5 7
Israel 33.3% 2 4 6
Vietnam 50.0% 3 3 6
Bosnia-Herzegovina 80.0% 4 1 5
Congo 100.0% 5 0 5
Argentina 0.0% 0 5 5
Chile 0.0% 0 5 5
Bangladesh 0.0% 0 4 4
Jordan 50.0% 2 2 4
Senegal 25.0% 1 3 4
Kuwait 0.0% 0 3 3
Morocco 0.0% 0 3 3
Bulgaria 100.0% 2 0 2

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