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The federal government continued its crackdown on the legal immigration system on Monday with a decision that could result in the deportation of thousands of asylum seekers in California.
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Under an interim rule change from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, asylum seekers can be sent directly to immigration court without an initial interview about their application. One of the longstanding practices for asylum seekers — people who have left their country fearing torture or persecution — is to first interview with an immigration officer.
The administration framed the rule change, which takes effect immediately, as a way to reduce the backlog and fraud in the asylum system. But immigration experts and lawyers said the move will likely be used to streamline asylum rejections and subsequent deportations.
“The overall goal is to remove noncitizens as quickly and with as little process as possible,” said UC Davis Law Professor Kevin Johnson, a nationally recognized immigration expert.
USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said Monday that the asylum system had been “exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection.”
“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 said.
There are two paths to seek asylum in the U.S.
One path is called affirmative asylum, which is for people not in removal proceedings and who potentially entered the country through legal means such as a visa. Those cases are determined by a USCIS officer.
The other process is defensive asylum, which is for people already in removal proceedings. They may apply for asylum retroactively and have their cases decided by an immigration judge in the Department of Justice.
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Those seeking affirmative asylum may renew their request through the defensive process if the initial application is denied. The rule change will affect these asylum cases, which USCIS said “essentially allows an alien to get a second chance at asylum.” The agency estimated that about 31% — 444,724 — of the cases in its affirmative asylum backlog could be affected.
“A lot of cases are just going to be streamlined to denial,” said Sacramento immigration lawyer Brian Lopez.
California had roughly 169,000 pending asylum cases by the end of 2023, the most recent data available, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, known as TRAC. That is second most for any state in the nation, following only Florida.
The average wait for an asylum hearing in California is 1,412 days as of that latest data. It is unclear how many of the California cases are affirmative asylum applications.
Monday’s announcement further restricts the legal pathways for immigrants. Among other changes, President Donald Trump’s administration had already tightened asylum eligibility at the border, lowered the annual cap of refugees allowed in the country and ended Temporary Protected Status for 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants nationally.
It also comes after the administration has removed more than 100 immigration judges across the country to “reestablishing an immigration judge corps that is dedicated to restoring the rule to the law” and to align with Trump’s pledge to deport record numbers of people. These new judges, along with a government attorney arguing against them in court, will likely make it harder for asylum seekers to win their cases.
“It’s a lot more difficult when you have an attorney on the other side as opposed to trying to convince an immigration officer that you meet the requirements,” Lopez said.
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