How many Somali asylum applications were denied or approved in the US since 2020?
Executive summary
Available public reporting and government releases in the provided sources do not give a single, definitive tally of how many Somali asylum applications in the United States were approved or denied since 2020; the Justice Department’s asylum-by-nationality table lists Somalia among countries with recorded grants and denials but does not provide a clear, year-by-year U.S. total in the supplied documents [1]. Recent news coverage and government actions since 2024–2025 focus on Temporary Protected Status (TPS) decisions affecting small numbers (a congressional estimate put Somali TPS beneficiaries at about 705 nationwide) and on broad pauses or suspensions of asylum and refugee processing, rather than publishing a consolidated approval/denial count for Somali asylum seekers since 2020 [2] [3] [4].
1. No single U.S. figure appears in the provided reporting
None of the supplied articles or government pages present a single, authoritative number for “Somali asylum applications approved or denied in the U.S. since 2020.” The Department of Justice’s “Asylum Decision Rates by Nationality” identifies Somalia in a nationality breakdown with grants and denials, but the excerpt in our packet does not include a clear, cumulative U.S. total for the 2020–2025 period [1]. Major news coverage in 2025 documents policy decisions affecting Somalis — TPS changes and pauses in asylum adjudications — but these pieces do not replace or cite a comprehensive statistic for approvals/denials since 2020 [2] [4].
2. What the DOJ table shows (and what it doesn’t) — partial, nationality-level data
The DOJ/EOIR document in the collection, titled “Asylum Decision Rates by Nationality,” lists Somalia with entries for “grants” and “denials” in a nationality breakdown, indicating Somalia is tracked in asylum outcome reporting; however, the snippet in our set does not provide the full table or the period covered, so it cannot be used alone to state definitive totals for 2020–2025 [1]. In short: the DOJ source confirms such data exists at the nationality level but the provided extract is insufficient to compute the requested cumulative number.
3. Recent policy moves complicate any simple tally
Several 2025 policy actions affect flows and processing: an administration order paused or suspended parts of refugee admissions and asylum decisions, and the Trump administration moved to end TPS protections for Somalis in Minnesota — notes that reflect changes in the population considered and in adjudication practices, but the reporting focuses on policy and legal consequences rather than enumerating historic approval/denial counts since 2020 [3] [2] [4]. Those policy changes mean any straightforward count must account for interruptions, redesignations and case reviews that could alter how many cases were adjudicated, approved, or administratively held.
4. Other jurisdictions give comparative context — EU and UN data
European data in our packet show that EU+ countries issued thousands of first-instance decisions for Somali applicants between April 2023 and March 2025 and reported an EU+ recognition rate of roughly 56% for Somalis, illustrating that outcomes vary widely by jurisdiction and time [5]. UNHCR and NGOs report large Somali displacement figures and many pending asylum cases globally — for example, UNHCR and other humanitarian sources describe hundreds of thousands of Somali refugees and hundreds of thousands more waiting for asylum — underscoring that a U.S.-only figure would be a small piece of a much larger international picture [6] [7].
5. Why precise U.S. numbers are hard to extract from media reports
News stories focus on policy, prosecutions, or programmatic impacts (e.g., asylum fraud prosecutions, TPS redesignations), not database-level tabulations; the DOJ table exists but our provided extract is incomplete for the years requested [8] [1]. Moreover, relevant federal agencies (DHS, USCIS, EOIR) publish different datasets at different cadences — some by fiscal year, some by nationality — so assembling a verified U.S. total requires accessing full DOJ/EOIR and DHS/USCIS datasets beyond the snippets in this packet [1] [9].
6. What to request next if you want a firm number
Ask for the full DOJ/EOIR “Asylum Decision Rates by Nationality” table and USCIS/EOIR annual statistics for fiscal years 2020–2025; those full data releases will allow a precise count of Somali asylum grants and denials in the U.S. since 2020 [1] [9]. The sources we have here demonstrate that such nationality-level data are compiled [1] but the excerpts provided do not include the full totals needed to answer your original question.
Limitations: this analysis relies only on the supplied search results; the documents show relevant data exist (notably at DOJ/EOIR) but the excerpts in the packet do not contain a definitive U.S. cumulative total for Somali asylum approvals or denials from 2020 onward [1]. Alternative viewpoints in the sources focus on policy impacts and on larger international recognition rates rather than on a single U.S. tally [5] [3].