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 administration’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.
