Trump admin mulls plan to deny asylum applications without interviewing applicants amid massive backlog | Today’s news
US President Donald Trump’s administration appears to be intensifying its crackdown on immigrants in the country. The administration is reportedly preparing a plan that would allow immigration officials to quickly deny some asylum applications without interviewing the applicants.
CBS News reported on the development on Monday (local time), citing internal federal documents. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) order outlined in internal documents would be the latest effort by the administration to limit access to the country’s asylum system, which officials have said is marred by systematic fraud.
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What does the new regulation propose?
Under the new regulations, US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers, an arm of DHS, will be able to reject asylum applications without following the traditional practice of interviewing applicants if they find that cases were filed a year after the applicants arrived in the country.
The agency would then place rejected applicants in removal proceedings before the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) immigration court system, which would require them to plead their cases to remain in the country in a hostile environment, according to the documents.
The proposed regulation, detailed in internal documents, would allow USCIS officials to continue processing an asylum application and schedule an interview if they determine that the applicant qualifies for an exception to the one-year filing deadline.
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But it would also mark a significant departure from the agency’s long-established practice of interviewing nearly all asylum seekers before deciding their claims, which allows officials to quickly reject applications when available records indicate applicants have not met the one-year filing requirement.
What does US immigration law say?
The report suggests that immigration law generally bars foreigners from applying for asylum if they do so a year after entering the country. However, this provision includes exceptions such as cases involving a serious medical condition or bad legal advice. The deadline does not apply to unaccompanied minors either.
U.S. law also allows most aliens on U.S. soil to apply for asylum even though they entered the country illegally. However, obtaining asylum itself requires meeting a much higher standard, where applicants must prove that they are escaping persecution based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a certain social group. Individuals granted asylum can remain in the US permanently, while those whose applications are denied are generally deported.
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The Trump administration is considering options for resolving pending claims
A USCIS spokesman told CBS News in a statement that the administration is “considering multiple options” to address the more than one million asylum backlog “created by the Biden administration’s dangerous open border policy,” including sending “insufficient” applications to immigration courts.
“This would allow USCIS to avoid wasting time on asylum applications that would otherwise be referred to immigration proceedings and allow illegal aliens to have their claims heard by the courts,” the USCIS spokesperson added.
Huge backlog of asylum cases
In the past few years, a backlog of millions of asylum applications has hampered the federal government’s ability to quickly review applications, a backlog that both Republican and Democratic administrations say encourages economic migrants to use the system to stay and work in the U.S. despite not being eligible for asylum.
USCIS, which oversees asylum cases filed by immigrants in the country legally or who do not face deportation, had a backlog of 1.5 million asylum applications as of last fall, government figures show. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice’s immigration courts, which handle deportation cases, had a backlog of 3.3 million applications as of March, 2.3 million of which involved asylum applications.
As part of its crackdown on deportations, the Trump administration has taken several measures to limit asylum and is aggressively pursuing the deportation of asylum seekers, particularly those who were allowed into the US along the southern border under the Biden administration.
