New federal rule sends hundreds of thousands of asylum cases to immigration courts
WASHINGTON— In its latest move to restrict the legal immigration system, the Trump administration announced a sweeping change on Monday that could lead to the deportation of thousands of asylum seekers.
The change at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services allows asylum officers to bypass the need to interview specific applicants and instead refer them directly to immigration judges for deportation proceedings.
The organization estimates that a third of the more than 1.4 million backlogged asylum cases, or 444,000, could be affected by the rule.
The administration evaluated this move as an effort to streamline the process and reduce the backlog of cases. interim final rule It will go into effect Tuesday and is subject to 60 days of public comment.
“For too long, the asylum system has been abused for delays and work authorization purposes, not legitimate claims for protection,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a news release.
“America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who truly fear persecution, and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to timely adjudication of these claims rather than those seeking to use the system as a loophole,” Edlow added.
But immigrant advocates said the change leaves asylum seekers who try to comply with the law vulnerable to deportation.
Immigrants can apply for asylum in two ways: positively or defensively.
Those who enter the country legally (e.g., with a visa) and still have legal status apply to USCIS, and their cases are adjudicated by an asylum officer. Those who cross the border illegally or are undocumented can appeal by presenting their case to an immigration judge after being subject to deportation proceedings.
Immigration courts are not an independent system; They report to the Department of Justice, and judges are federal employees.
The change is significant because the Trump administration fired more than 100 immigration judges and replaced them with military lawyers and former prosecutors from the Department of Homeland Security. Many of the fired judges were appointed during the Biden administration or previously worked as lawyers representing immigrants.
In recent months, immigration courts have approved a declining percentage of asylum requests as judges face pressure to approve more deportations. After immigration officers began arresting people in courthouses, many immigrants became wary of attending court proceedings, which helped increase deportation orders.
USCIS refers thousands of cases to immigration courts each year. federal data show. In the first half of this fiscal year, the agency transferred 31,454 cases to immigration courts; that figure was already on track to be higher than the annual total of 40,932 in 2025. The highest annual number of cases, 61,729, occurred in 2019 during Trump’s first presidency.
USCIS said the current policy, which requires an asylum officer to conduct an initial interview with an applicant before deciding whether to send the case to an immigration judge, “essentially allows an alien to get a second chance at asylum.”
The rule change comes on the heels of the Trump administration ending temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and others, many of whom entered the U.S. legally and applied “affirmatively” for asylum, said Todd Schulte, president of the immigrant advocacy organization FWD.us. in xSchulte called the move “a terrible harbinger.”
