Immigration judge Katherine Estes

Name: EOIR case outcomes for immigration judge Katherine Estes
Creator: U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review
License: https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright

EOIR records Katherine Estes as a serving immigration judge, code KAE, with 144 proceedings completed in FY2026, which is not over — more than in the finished fiscal years before it.

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 Applications that were abandoned, withdrawn, administratively closed, transferred or not adjudicated are counted separately below and are in neither side of the rate.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 September 1, 2026 and moves every month.

Cases, decisions and backlog

144
Proceedings completed, FY2026 so far: 4.2% decided in absentia; 0
Proceedings pending as of September 2026: Not ranked
Asylum grant rate: only 11 decided, under the 100 a rate needs here

This judge decided 11 asylum applications in the five fiscal years to 2026 — 0 granted and 11 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 23 ended neither way.

By fiscal year

Immigration judge Katherine Estes completed 4 proceedings in FY2025, against 0 in FY2013

Proceedings EOIR records this judge completing, by federal fiscal year. A year with no column is a year in which EOIR records no proceeding completed by this judge.

U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review — EOIR immigration court outcomes by judge, court and fiscal year

The figures behind this chart

Immigration judge Katherine Estes completed 4 proceedings in FY2025, against 0 in FY2013. Proceedings EOIR records this judge completing, by federal fiscal year. A year with no column is a year in which EOIR records no proceeding completed by this judge.
Fiscal year	Completed	In absentia	Asylum granted	Asylum denied	Neither
FY2025	4	0	0	0	0
FY2024	0	0	0	0	0
FY2023	0	0	0	0	0
FY2022	0	0	0	0	0
FY2020	0	0	0	0	0
FY2016	0	0	0	0	0
FY2013	0	0	0	0	0

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 Katherine Estes completed proceedings
Court	Proceedings completed
Kansas City, MO (KAN)	145
Chicago, IL (CHI)	3

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