Immigration judge Howard E. Achtsam

EOIR records Howard E. Achtsam as a serving immigration judge, code HEA, with 2,166 proceedings completed in the five fiscal years to 2024.

American Factbook Research

What these figures are, and what they are not

None of this measures how this judge decides. Represented and unrepresented applicants have very different outcomes and a judge’s mix of the two is not the judge’s doing; so is the share of their docket that is detained, and detention courts grant asylum at a fraction of the rate other courts do. EOIR publishes representation in a table this site has not loaded, and nothing here adjusts for either.

A grant rate is over decisions, not over applications. Applications that were abandoned, withdrawn, administratively closed, transferred or not adjudicated are counted separately below and are in neither side of the rate. Across EOIR’s whole file there are more of those than there are grants and denials together.

Proceedings, not people, and a case can carry several. The figures below count proceedings and asylum applications, which are both larger than the number of people involved. Pending is a snapshot as of 2026-09-01 and moves every month.

Cases, decisions and backlog

2,166
Proceedings completed, FY2020–2024: 33.1% decided in absentia; 0
Proceedings pending at 2026-09: Not ranked
Asylum grant rate: only 46 decided, under the 100 a rate needs here

This judge decided 46 asylum applications in the five fiscal years to 2024 — 15 granted and 31 denied. That is below the 100 this site needs before it will publish a rate, because at a hundred decisions the interval around one is already about nine points wide. A further 147 ended neither way.

By fiscal year

2 more columns on a wider screen

What EOIR records for immigration judge Howard E. Achtsam, by federal fiscal year
Fiscal year	Completed	In absentia	Asylum granted	Asylum denied	Neither
FY2024	1	0	0	0	0
FY2023	29	1	0	1	8
FY2022	715	122	1	9	48
FY2021	549	0	9	1	73
FY2020	872	594	5	20	18
FY2019	690	154	3	48	56
FY2018	627	161	4	33	58
FY2017	879	426	1	4	127
FY2016	896	325	14	26	160
FY2015	518	16	14	68	30

Complete fiscal years only. A proceeding is counted in the year it completed, which is not the year it was recorded, so this table is not a record of what arrived.

Where the proceedings were

Immigration courts where Howard E. Achtsam completed proceedings
Court	Proceedings completed
Harlingen, TX (HLG)	36,495
Los Fresnos, TX (PIS)	31,143
Miami, FL (MIA)	39
Los Angeles, CA (WLA)	17
Miami, FL (KRO)	11
Tacoma, WA (TAC)	10
Houston, TX (HOU)	9
Pearsall, TX (PSD)	4
San Antonio, TX (SNA)	4
Elizabeth, NJ (ELZ)	2
Adelanto, CA (ADL)	1
Conroe, TX (CIC)	1
Dallas, TX (DAL)	1
Laredo, TX (LRO)	1
New York, NY (NYC)	1

The courts where EOIR records this judge completing proceedings, which is not the same as the courts they are assigned to: a judge is assigned to a median of three at once and as many as 72, and an assignment is not a posting.

Sources

EOIR immigration court outcomes by judge, court and fiscal year — U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review · retrieved September 1, 2026
EOIR immigration judges and courts

Data retrieved September 1, 2026