Free representation is thinnest where the courts are
The finding: the immigration-court system runs on 74 courts and 714 judges. The Department of Justice separately recognizes 1,256 nonprofit organizations authorized to give free or low-cost immigration representation. Divide one by the other, state by state, and the states carrying the heaviest court dockets often have the fewest recognized nonprofits to meet them. The five thinnest:
| State | Immigration courts | Judges | Recognized nonprofits | Per court |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Louisiana | 4 | 20 | 6 | 1.5 |
| Arizona | 4 | 23 | 18 | 4.5 |
| Hawaii | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5.0 |
| Georgia | 3 | 26 | 16 | 5.3 |
| Texas | 12 | 141 | 78 | 6.5 |
Nationally there are about 17 recognized nonprofits for every immigration court. The best-served state, Illinois, has 63 — a 42× spread from the least-served state that has any to the most.
Louisiana is the one to sit with. It runs 4 immigration courts and 20 judges — a docket the size of several bigger states — yet only 6 recognized nonprofits are based there, all of them stretched across a state that has become one of the country’s busiest immigration-detention corridors. Texas is the scale version of the same story: the largest court system in the nation, 141 judges across 12 courts, leans on 78 recognized nonprofits — fewer than one for every two judges.
Every state with a court, thinnest first
Department of Justice (EOIR) recognized nonprofit organizations per immigration court, for the states and territories that host at least one court. Courts and judges from the EOIR directory; organizations from EOIR's official roster. Marked rows are below the national average of 17.0 organizations per court.
| State | Courts | Judges | Recognized orgs | Per court |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Northern Mariana Islands | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Puerto Rico | 1 | 4 | 0 | 0.0 |
| Louisiana | 4 | 20 | 6 | 1.5 |
| Arizona | 4 | 23 | 18 | 4.5 |
| Hawaii | 1 | 3 | 5 | 5.0 |
| Georgia | 3 | 26 | 16 | 5.3 |
| Texas | 12 | 141 | 78 | 6.5 |
| Nevada | 1 | 4 | 7 | 7.0 |
| Tennessee | 2 | 20 | 14 | 7.0 |
| Utah | 1 | 6 | 8 | 8.0 |
| Missouri | 1 | 9 | 9 | 9.0 |
| Colorado | 2 | 18 | 25 | 12.5 |
| Virginia | 2 | 41 | 25 | 12.5 |
| New Mexico | 1 | 4 | 13 | 13.0 |
| Maryland | 2 | 28 | 28 | 14.0 |
| New Jersey | 2 | 16 | 29 | 14.5 |
| Indiana | 1 | 8 | 15 | 15.0 |
| Connecticut | 1 | 5 | 16 | 16.0 |
| Minnesota | 1 | 7 | 17 | 17.0 |
| Ohio | 1 | 15 | 19 | 19.0 |
| Nebraska | 1 | 8 | 20 | 20.0 |
| Oregon | 1 | 5 | 21 | 21.0 |
| New York | 6 | 66 | 137 | 22.8 |
| Massachusetts | 2 | 18 | 46 | 23.0 |
| California | 11 | 92 | 273 | 24.8 |
| Florida | 3 | 59 | 76 | 25.3 |
| Michigan | 1 | 8 | 26 | 26.0 |
| Washington | 2 | 16 | 56 | 28.0 |
| Pennsylvania | 1 | 14 | 30 | 30.0 |
| North Carolina | 1 | 9 | 44 | 44.0 |
| Illinois | 1 | 20 | 63 | 63.0 |
Sources: EOIR court directory and the EOIR recognized-organizations roster. "Recognized organization" is a specific EOIR program (nonprofits authorized to employ accredited non-attorney representatives); it does not include private attorneys, law-school clinics, or bar pro-bono panels, so a low count means few of this free/low-cost channel, not an absence of all legal help.
What the data shows
- Coverage runs backwards from the docket. The states with the heaviest immigration-court caseloads — Louisiana, Texas, Georgia, Arizona — sit at the top of the fewest-per-court list, not the bottom. Recognized-nonprofit capacity has not been built where the hearings are.
- Two courts have no recognized nonprofit at all. Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands each host a court but have zero recognized organizations on the roster. People there rely entirely on organizations elsewhere or on private counsel.
- The gap is wide. 1.5 recognized nonprofits per court in Louisiana, 63 in Illinois: the same free/low-cost channel is roughly 42× more available per court in the best-served state than the worst.
- This is not the whole picture of legal help. “Recognized organization” is a narrow DOJ program. A state can have a low count here and still have private immigration attorneys, law-school clinics, and bar pro-bono panels. The count tracks one specific free channel, not all representation.
Why this matters
Whether someone facing removal has a lawyer is one of the strongest predictors of how their case ends — represented people are far more likely to win relief and to appear for their hearings. Recognized nonprofits are a core part of how low-income immigrants get that representation for free or at low cost, because their accredited representatives can appear before the court without the fees a private attorney charges.
Where those nonprofits are scarce relative to the courts, the practical result is longer waits, unrepresented respondents, and people traveling out of state — or going without. The rows at the top of this table are the places where that squeeze is tightest.
Two honest limits before you read too much into a single row. A recognized-org count is not a capacity measure — one large organization with several accredited representatives may serve more people than three small ones. And representation is not bound by state line: an organization in one state can represent someone before a court in another, and EOIR holds many hearings by Webex, so a low local count is a signal of local access, not a verdict on whether help is reachable at all.
If you need to find help, MigrantUSA lists the recognized organizations in each state and every immigration court by state, with addresses and hearing-access details.
Method and caveat
Court and judge counts are taken from the Department of Justice EOIR court directory: each court is counted once, and judges are counted from the named judge rows in each court’s hearing-access table. Recognized-organization counts come from EOIR’s official Recognized Organizations and Accredited Representatives roster, using EOIR’s own by-state index. The ratio is the recognized nonprofits located in a state divided by the immigration courts in that state.
Three limits are stated plainly. “Recognized organization” is a narrow program — nonprofits authorized to employ accredited non-attorney representatives — and excludes private attorneys, clinics, and bar pro-bono panels, so a low count means few of this specific channel, not an absence of all legal help. The count is of organizations, not of representatives or of capacity — one org may hold several accredited representatives. And the District of Columbia is excluded because it has no immigration court, so it cannot appear in a per-court comparison. Rosters change as organizations are recognized, renewed, or lapse; confirm at justice.gov before relying on any single figure.
This is general information, not legal advice. To find representation for a specific case, use the recognized-organization and court directories linked above, or the EOIR roster directly.
Download the data: eoir_legal_deserts.json — all 31 court states and territories, with courts, judges, recognized nonprofits, and nonprofits per court.
Suggested citation: MigrantUSA, “Immigration-court legal deserts by state, 2026,” https://migrantusa.com/datasets/immigration-court-legal-deserts/ (accessed [date]).
Embed this widget on your site — free
Newsrooms, legal-aid and immigrant-services organizations, law-school clinics, and public-library resource desks: drop in the panel below. It shows the national ratio and the states with the fewest recognized nonprofits per court, and updates when we refresh the underlying rosters.
<iframe src="https://migrantusa.com/embed/legal-deserts/" width="100%" height="560"
style="border:1px solid #e2e8e4;border-radius:8px;max-width:640px"
title="Immigration-court legal deserts by state" loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:12px">Source: <a href="https://migrantusa.com/datasets/immigration-court-legal-deserts/">MigrantUSA — immigration-court legal deserts by state</a></p>