Asylum seekers could be sent directly to deportation under new federal rule

The Trump administration launched a plan Tuesday to channel hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers directly into deportation proceedings, a change that some attorneys said could lead to people being removed from the United States without a hearing.

Trump officials introduced a rule designed to reduce the 1.4 million asylum cases pending in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security agency that processes immigration applications, by nearly a third. The rule took effect immediately, before the public could weigh in.

In the past, asylum seekers who entered the U.S. legally or were never charged with an immigration violation had the opportunity to apply for refuge in an office before a trained asylum officer. The officer could refer them to immigration court for removal proceedings if they were rejected, or allow them to continue proceedings and potentially get on a path to obtaining U.S. citizenship.

Under the new rule, officials say as many as 444,724 cases could be transferred directly to one of the Justice Department’s immigration judges. Trump officials have empowered judges to dismiss certain cases without a hearing, so attorneys say it is possible that many asylum seekers will be deported without a chance to be heard.

Trump officials said in a statement that the rule is necessary because the asylum system is facing a “crisis.”

“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 B. Edlow said in a statement. “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.”

The measure is the latest means through which the Trump administration has sought to transform the asylum system. President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts in office, barred asylum seekers’ entry into the United States by declaring an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

He has also targeted those who are already living inside the U.S., including hundreds of thousands of people who probably arrived legally and followed the rules to apply for asylum.

Trump officials are preparing to terminate work permits for Haitians and Syrians in the coming days after the Supreme Court enabled officials to allow their temporary protected status to expire. If those immigrants also applied for asylum and their cases are referred to the courts, lawyers say, the threat of deportation could be imminent.

“It’s all part of a plan to take legal people and make them illegal,” said Ira Kurzban, one of the attorneys who represented Haitians in the case that went to the Supreme Court. “That’s what they’ve essentially done.”

The United States is a signatory to the 1967 United Nations protocol on refugees, which prohibits member countries from expelling immigrants to nations where they face serious threats to their lives.

Trump officials, Kurzban said, are betraying that principle and turning the asylum system into “a joke.”

“At a 30,000-foot level it sure looks like a deportation machine,” he said.

Trump officials argue that smugglers have exploited the U.S. asylum system, flooding it with weak applications so that immigrants may live and work legally in the United States as their cases drag through the system.

Asylum creates a path to U.S. permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship. To be eligible, applicants must show that they face persecution in their homeland based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or another trait that makes them a specific target. They also must pass background checks and apply within one year of arrival.

The more than 400,000 pending asylum cases before USCIS that could be sent to deportation proceedings largely involve individuals who filed for refuge after being in the United States for more than a year, officials said in announcing the rule.

Federal law says asylum seekers must apply within a year of arriving, and officials contend that most late applicants referred to immigration judges in the past few years have been ineligible for an exception to that requirement.

Advocates for immigrants have long argued that people fleeing for their lives are not well versed in the intricacies and deadlines of U.S. immigration laws, and note that the immigration courts do not assign them public defenders. Sometimes bona fide applications are filed late, they say, and federal law allows judges to overlook that in extraordinary cases.

Though the new rule took effect immediately Tuesday, USCIS said it will accept public comments and later issue a final rule with its responses.