Over the past three years, at least 1,372 Nigerians have applied for refuge in the United States.
The Executive Office for Immigration Review has released updated case-completion statistics that include this information.
The Intercept found that 475 Nigerians were granted protection by US judges in 2022, 514 in 2023, and 383 in 2024—a 25 percent decrease in 2023 and 2024 alone.
A 12-year-old Nigerian chess prodigy named Tani Adewumi was one of the 475 in 2022. After a court fight that started in a homeless shelter in Manhattan, Tani’s family fled Boko Haram dangers and obtained refuge in New York in late 2022.
Edafe Okporo, a memoirist and LGBTQ activist, was granted protection in 2024 after she documented instances of domestic violence that threatened her life.
However, at least 1,534 Nigerians were unable to persuade the bench to accept their asylum requests during that time.
In 2022, 2023, and 2024, a total of 603, 666, and 265 claims were rejected, respectively. This is a 56 percent decrease over the 2022 rejection rate.
In 2022, Nigerian applicants recorded 1,534 rejections, 68 abandonments, and 552 cases that the courts characterised as “not adjudicated.” In 2023 and 2024, there were fewer procedural closures.
Every year, the US Department of Justice’s “Asylum Decisions by Nationality” webpage publishes the EOIR report. Every nation that reported at least a few instances is included.
Nigerians filed the most asylum requests in the United States in 2022 and 2023, according to data from Africa.
However, things changed in 2024 when 383 Nigerians, 291 Ethiopians, and 527 Cameroonians sought refuge.
The others are Sudan (42) Senegal (99), Uganda (86), Eritrea (193), Ghana (238), and Egypt (203). Closer examination reveals that the majority of asylum petitions in the United States come from Latin America and Eurasia, with African claims still making up a very minor portion of these applications.
With 3,605 awards, Russian citizens received the highest asylum protection worldwide in 2024; U.S. officials credit this increase to draft evasion and dissident cases triggered by the conflict in Ukraine.
As more dissidents escape the communist system, China reported 2,998 awards, similar to 2,656 in Venezuela and 2,000 in Nicaragua.
U.S. immigration judges also awarded protection to 1,684 Salvadorans, 1,624 Hondurans, 1,592 Guatemalans, 1,007 Cubans and 751 Mexicans.
On the denial side, Mexicans reported the largest rejections with 3,910 denials, followed by China with 903, El Salvador with 2,880, Ecuador with 2,774 and Peru with 2,424.
Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act governs asylum under U.S. law.
If someone can demonstrate a “well-founded fear” due to their race, religion, nationality, political beliefs, or affiliation with a certain social group, anybody who is physically present in the United States may apply for asylum.
However, criminal convictions, one-year filing deadlines and the notion of “firm resettlement” can all ruin asylum claims before they reach a hearing. The operates on two tracks: those who apply affirmatively through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and those who assert a “defensive” claim after being placed in removal.
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Success depends on corroborating documents, credible testimony and, increasingly, on securing scarce legal counsel. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services first vets “affirmative” cases; if rejected, they are rerouted to EOIR’s immigration courts, where the government’s trial attorneys can still oppose release. “Defensive” claims arise when migrants are already in removal proceedings, the EOIR says.
In his first tenure (2017 – 2021), President Donald Trump reviewed these conditions with policy tools such as the Migrant Protection Protocols, otherwise known as “Remain in Mexico” and a third-country transit bar that disqualified most applicants who passed through another country before reaching the U.S. border.
Although Trump’s rules were partly dismantled or narrowed under President Joe Biden, a new Circumvention of Lawful Pathways regulation means many arrivals must now secure an appointment through the Customs and Border Protection’s One mobile app or prove they sought refuge elsewhere en route—which was criticised for its close semblance with the Trump-era playbook.
The EOIR notes that case flow and court staffing can shift outcomes from one fiscal cycle to the next. This is as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expelled 902 Nigerian nationals since the start of fiscal year 2019, according to data from the agency’s 2024 Annual Report.
