Immigration judge Mark D. Donovan

EOIR records Mark D. Donovan as a serving immigration judge, code MDD, with 4,704 proceedings completed in the five fiscal years to 2025 and 52.1% of the asylum applications decided granted, against 37.3% across the country.

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 Applications that were abandoned, withdrawn, administratively closed, transferred or not adjudicated are counted separately below and are in neither side of the rate.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

4,704
Proceedings completed, FY2021–2025: 16.8% decided in absentia; 4,377
Proceedings pending at 2026-09: 52.1%
Asylum grant rate, FY2024–2025: 273 granted of 524 decided

Over the 2 fiscal years from 2024 to 2025, this judge granted 273 asylum applications and denied 251 — 52.1% of those decided, against 37.3% across the country. A further 644 ended neither way and are in neither figure.

By fiscal year

2 more columns on a wider screen

What EOIR records for immigration judge Mark D. Donovan, by federal fiscal year
Fiscal year	Completed	In absentia	Asylum granted	Asylum denied	Neither
FY2025	3,546	641	230	208	447
FY2024	1,017	144	43	43	123
FY2023	74	2	0	0	33
FY2022	60	2	0	0	40
FY2021	7	3	0	0	1
FY2020	2	2	0	0	0
FY2019	1	1	0	0	0
FY2018	1	0	0	0	0
FY2017	17	0	0	1	10
FY2016	41	0	0	0	15

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 Mark D. Donovan completed proceedings
Court	Proceedings completed
Boston, MA (BOS)	5,363
Chelmsford, MA (LOW)	6
Chelmsford, MA (CHE)	5
New York, NY (NYC)	4
Philadelphia, PA (PHI)	4
Miami, FL (MIA)	2
New York, NY (NYV)	2
Otay Mesa, CA (OTM)	2
Cleveland, OH (CLE)	1
Eloy, AZ (ELO)	1
El Paso, TX (ELP)	1
Elizabeth, NJ (ELZ)	1
El Paso, TX (EPD)	1
New York, NY (NYB)	1
Orlando, FL (ORL)	1
Pearsall, TX (PSD)	1
San Antonio, TX (SNA)	1
San Diego, CA (SND)	1
Sterling, VA (STE)	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