Trump administration plan would allow for quick asylum rejections without interviews, internal documents show

The Trump administration is developing a plan that would allow U.S. immigration officials to quickly reject some asylum applications without interviewing the applicants, according to internal federal government documents obtained by CBS News. 

The Department of Homeland Security regulation described in the internal documents would be the latest effort by President Trump’s White House to tighten access to the U.S. asylum system, which administration officials have claimed is plagued by systematic fraud. 

Under the regulation, officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a branch of DHS, would be empowered to reject asylum applications, without adhering to the traditional practice of interviewing the applicants, if they find the cases were filed a year after their arrival to the U.S.

USCIS would place rejected applicants in deportation proceedings before the Justice Department’s immigration court system, requiring them to plead their cases to remain in the country in an adversarial setting, the documents say.

U.S. immigration law generally disqualifies foreigners from applying for asylum if they do so a year after entering the country. But that provision includes exceptions, such as cases involving a serious medical condition or poor legal counsel. Unaccompanied minors are also not subject to the deadline. 

The regulation outlined in the internal federal documents would allow USCIS officers to move forward with an asylum case and schedule an interview if they determine the applicants meet one of the exceptions for not filing their application within the 1-year deadline.

But the regulation would nonetheless upend USCIS’ longstanding policy of interviewing virtually all asylum applicants before making a decision on their claims, allowing for quick rejections of cases where the paper record suggests the applicants did not meet the 1-year deadline.

In a statement to CBS News, a USCIS spokesperson said the Trump administration is “considering multiple options” to address a backlog of over a million asylum claims “created by the Biden adminsration’s dangerous open borders policies,” including sending “deficient” applications to the immigration courts.  

“This would allow USCIS to avoid wasting time on asylum applications that it would otherwise refer to immigration proceedings and will allow illegal aliens to have their claims heard by a judge,” the USCIS spokesperson added.

Conchita Cruz, an immigration lawyer who runs an organization that assists asylum-seekers, expressed concern that the regulation would “wrongfully” place applicants in deportation proceedings without allowing them to explain why they may have filed their application after the 1-year deadline.

Cruz, the co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, said there are “many reasons” why asylum-seekers may file their applications more than a year after entering the U.S., including because they have been living in the country with a temporary status, like a visa.

“The government would be changing the rules on immigrants who have been navigating a complex immigration process, often for many years,” she added.

U.S. law allows most foreigners on American soil to request asylum, even if they enter the country illegally. But the threshold to win the actual legal protection of asylum is much higher, requiring applicants to show they’re fleeing persecution on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, political views or membership in a social group. Those granted asylum are allowed to live in the U.S. permanently, while those whose cases are denied are supposed to be deported.

In recent years, a backlog of millions of asylum cases has hindered the federal government’s ability to adjudicate applications quickly, a logjam that Republican and Democratic administrations have said encourages economic migrants to use the system to stay and work in the U.S., even though they do not qualify for asylum.

USCIS, which oversees asylum cases filed by immigrants in the U.S. legally or who are not facing deportation, had 1.5 million pending asylum applications as of last fall, government figures show. Meanwhile, the Justice Department’s immigration courts, which handle deportation cases, had 3.3 million pending claims as of March, 2.3 million of them involving asylum requests.

As part of its deportation crackdown, the Trump administration has adopted various measures to restrict asylum and aggressively pursue the deportation of asylum-seekers, mainly those allowed into the U.S. along the southern border under the Biden administration.

The administration has brokered “safe third country” deportation agreements with multiple nations across the globe, including ones with questionable human rights records, to send asylum-seekers to countries that are not their own, with instructions to seek refuge there instead of in the U.S. 

Last year, officials also froze all asylum cases overseen by USCIS, after the suspect in the shooting of two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., was revealed to be an Afghan man who had been granted asylum. After several months, that pause was scaled back, but remains in place for cases filed by citizens of 39 countries listed on Mr. Trump’s “travel ban” proclamation.