Book Review: Lives in the balance: Asylum adjudication by the Department of Homeland Security

• Date: 01 December 2014
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567714554699
• Published date: 01 December 2014
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Schoenholtz, A., Schrag, P., & Ramji-Nogales, J. (2014).

Lives in the balance: Asylum adjudication by the Department of Homeland Security. New York: New York University

Press. 271 pp. $45.00 (Hardcover), ISBN-10 0814708765 & ISBN-13 978-0814708767.

Reviewed by: Caroline V. Comerford, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York, NY, USA

DOI: 10.1177/1057567714554699

Each of the authors of Lives in the Balance: Asylum Adjudication by the Department of Homeland

Security, Schoenholtz, Schrag, and Ramji-Nogales, have extensive experience in the field of

human rights, refugee law and policy, and asylum adjudication . As law professors who have

worked at the Center for Applied Legal Studies at Georgetown University, they have written on

the subjects of human rights, immigration law, and the Homeland Security asylum adjudication

process. Prior to writing Lives in the Ba lance, all three coauthored the book, Refugee Roulette:

Disparities in Asylum Adjudication, which examined the different levels of the asylum adjudica-

tion process: asylum adjudication officers; immigration court judges; Board of Immigration

Appeals, and the U.S. Courts of Appeals.

With Lives in the Balance, the authors continue to unearth statistically significant findings and

disparities in asylum adjudication. These include the negative effect immigration regulations have

on grant rates; several variables that result in detrimental outcomes in asylum decisions; and dispa-

rities in grant rates between the eight regional asylum offices. Against this backdrop, the authors

make recommendations to improve both asylum adjudication and immigration policy with the goal

of accuracy and fairness for bona fide refugees. The authors succeed in presenting the topic of asy-

lum adjudication in a straightforward manner that enables even a lay reader to grasp the significance

of the comprehensive research presented in Lives in the Balance.

Schoenholtz, Schrag, and Ramji-Nogales describe the bureaucratic structure of the U.S. Depart-

ment of Homeland Security, which consists of multiple branches and nearly 200,000 personnel, with

its stated purpose to shield America from both domestic and international terrorism. Homeland

Security consists of several branches: Federal Emergency Management Agency, Transportation

Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection and Immigration, and Customs Enforce-

ment. However, it is the humanitarian branch of DHS, the Asylum Adjudication Office (see Refugee

Act of 1980), which is the focus of Lives in the Balance. The main objective of this branch is to assist

in granting asylum to refugees who have a reasonable fear of persecution and/or have been victi-

mized and persecuted within their own country (p. 1).

The authors also present the findings from their empirical study, which examined a samp le

of 383,000 asylum cases over a 14-year period, and the grant rates of asylum adjudication offi-

cers employed within the eight different regional asylum offices throughout the United States

(New York, NY; Newark, NJ; Arlington, VA; San Francisco, CA, Los Angeles, CA; Miami,

FL; Chicago, IL; and Houston, TX). The underlying purpose of the study was to examine the

process of asylum adjudication and the effect that different varia bles (of both the applicants and

officers) have on grant rates (p. 3).

Lives in the Balance illustrates the crucial role of asylum adjudication officers in this process.

With each asylum application, officers confront potentially life or death consequences for genuine

refugees seeking asylum in the United States. Therefore, asylum adjudication officers, should,

according to the authors, possess more professional credentials than are presently required.

The book consists of 11 in-depth chapters that encapsulate the 14-year study. The authors utilized

a multifaceted approach by collecting data from a variety of sources: the DHS database ‘‘Refugee,

Asylum, and Parole System’’ (RAPS); DHS 2011 Survey of adjudication officers; and interviews

with asylum adjudication officers. The authors examined many dynamics involved in the adjudica-

tion process including legal criteria of meritorious versus nonmeritorious claims; the 1-year filing

420 International Criminal Justice Review 24(4)