WASHINGTON — In its latest move to restrict the legal immigration system, the Trump administration announced a sweeping change Monday that could lead to the deportations of thousands of asylum seekers.
The change from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services eliminates the requirement that asylum officers interview certain applicants and instead refers them directly to immigration judges for removal proceedings.
The agency estimates that up 444,000 cases could be affected by the rule. A case can involve a single person or a family, so an untold number of individuals could be affected by the new policy.
The administration framed the move as an effort to streamline the process and reduce a backlog of 1.4 million asylum cases.
The interim final rule takes effect Tuesday and is subject to a 60-day public comment period.
“For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said in a news release.
“America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole,” Edlow added.
But advocates for immigrants and other experts said the change leaves asylum seekers who tried to follow the law vulnerable to detention and deportation while doing nothing to reduce the backlog of immigration cases.
Migrants can apply for asylum two ways: affirmatively or defensively.
Those who entered the country legally, such as on a visa, and still have lawful status can apply with USCIS and have their cases decided by an asylum officer. Those who crossed the border illegally or who are undocumented typically apply for asylum after being placed into removal proceedings, where they make their case to an immigration judge.
Interviews with asylum officers are regarded as non-adversarial because asylum officers are trained to understand country conditions, and the interviews take place in a private room. In immigration court proceedings, which include prosecutors for the federal government, immigrants aren’t entitled to an attorney as in criminal proceedings.
Immigration courts are not an independent system — they are housed under the Department of Justice and judges are federal employees.
That shift announced Monday is significant because the Trump administration has fired more than 100 immigration judges and replaced them with military lawyers and former prosecutors for 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 dwindling percentage of asylum claims as judges face pressure to approve more deportations. After immigration agents began arresting people in courthouses, many immigrants grew wary of showing up for court proceedings, which has aided the increase in removal orders.
Immigration courts have a backlog of 3 million cases.
Doris Meissner, who directs the U.S. immigration policy program at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said shifting cases from one backlogged agency to another even more backlogged agency doesn’t make sense.
Meissner led efforts to reform the asylum system as commissioner of the former Immigration and Naturalization Service (the precursor to Homeland Security) during the Clinton administration. She said asylum cases at USCIS cost less and take less time than those overseen by immigration courts.
Edlow’s claim that people take advantage of a “loophole” in the system also doesn’t make sense, Meissner said, because cases before an immigration judge are still entitled to appeals in federal circuit courts.
Meissner said the decision may stem from the Trump administration’s view that asylum officers are softer on applicants than immigration judges.
“The ultimate impact of making this change certainly seems to be to try to deny as many cases as possible, without regard to the fairness of the determination,” she said.
USCIS refers thousands of cases to immigration courts each year, federal data shows. During the first half of this fiscal year, the agency transferred 31,454 cases to immigration courts — a number that was already on track to be higher than the 2025 yearly total of 40,932.
USCIS said the old policy, which required an asylum officer to first interview an applicant before deciding whether to send the case to an immigration judge, “essentially allows an alien to get a second chance at asylum.”
Todd Schulte, president of the immigrant advocacy organization FWD.us, noted that the rule change comes just after the Trump administration terminated temporary legal protections for hundreds of thousands of Haitians and others, many of whom were allowed into the U.S. after arriving at the southern border. On X, Schulte called the move “a terrible harbinger.”
