Immigration judge John W. Cortes

EOIR records John W. Cortes as a serving immigration judge, code JOC, with 10,496 proceedings completed in the five fiscal years to 2025 and 15.7% of the asylum applications decided granted, against 37.3% across the country.

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 Applications that were abandoned, withdrawn, administratively closed, transferred or not adjudicated are counted separately below and are in neither side of the rate.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

10,496
Proceedings completed, FY2021–2025: 15.2% decided in absentia; 2,290
Proceedings pending as of September 2026: 15.7%
Asylum grant rate, FY2021–2025: 159 granted of 1,010 decided

Over the 5 fiscal years from 2021 to 2025, this judge granted 159 asylum applications and denied 851 — 15.7% of those decided, against 37.3% across the country. A further 1,308 ended neither way and are in neither figure.

By fiscal year

2 more columns on a wider screen

What EOIR records for immigration judge John W. Cortes, by federal fiscal year
Fiscal year	Completed	In absentia	Asylum granted	Asylum denied	Neither
FY2025	2,373	892	40	458	387
FY2024	2,369	369	54	164	452
FY2023	1,725	313	45	192	363
FY2022	3,148	18	6	17	63
FY2021	881	0	14	20	43
FY2020	607	40	86	214	65
FY2019	1,154	111	69	132	429
FY2018	9	0	0	0	2
FY2017	49	1	0	0	13
FY2016	100	0	0	0	17

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 John W. Cortes completed proceedings
Court	Proceedings completed
Phoenix, AZ (PHO)	8,590
Eloy, AZ (ELO)	4,696
New York, NY (NYV)	823
New York, NY (NYC)	751
Jena, LA (JNA)	172
Pearsall, TX (PSD)	31
Florence, AZ (FLO)	26
Tacoma, WA (TAC)	11
Van Nuys, CA (VNS)	8
Denver, CO (DEN)	3
Miami, FL (MIA)	3
Newark, NJ (NEW)	3
Philadelphia, PA (PHI)	3
San Diego, CA (SND)	3
Detroit, MI (DET)	2
El Paso, TX (EPD)	2
Houston, TX (HGP)	2
Los Angeles, CA (NLA)	2
Oakdale, LA (OAK)	2
Orlando, FL (ORL)	2
Otero, NM (OTO)	2
San Francisco, CA (SFR)	2
San Antonio, TX (SNA)	2
Atlanta, GA (ATL)	1
Fort Snelling, MN (BLM)	1
Buffalo, NY (BUF)	1
Chicago, IL (CHI)	1
Charlotte, NC (CHL)	1
Dallas, TX (DAL)	1
El Paso, TX (ELP)	1
Elizabeth, NJ (ELZ)	1
Otay Mesa, CA (OTM)	1
West Valley, UT (SLC)	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