The Trump administration is stripping protections of some asylum applicants who filed as far back as 2019.
NPR has learned that dozens of immigrants across the U.S. have received letters in the mail notifying them that their asylum cases have been dismissed by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a branch of the Department of Homeland Security.
The reason, according to the letters: These asylum-seekers, many of whom entered between 2019 and 2022, did not receive a mandatory screening, known as a "credible fear" interview, at the border.
The interview is conducted by an asylum officer once someone has been detained or has arrived in the United States. It is meant as an opportunity for a person to describe any fear of persecution they may face if they are returned to their home country.
The U.S. didn't have enough asylum officers to do credible fear interviews for every person crossing the border, given the huge influx of border-crossers starting with the COVID-19 pandemic, at the end of the first Trump administration and during the Biden administration, experts told NPR. Now it appears that the new Trump administration is dismissing applications, effectively making people start over on a process they began years ago.
This round of asylum case dismissals is the latest effort by the Trump administration to strip protections from those who have been in the U.S. for years. In the past few months, the administration has limited the ways in which people can seek asylum, has made the process more expensive and is now reviewing already filed claims and dismissing them if parts of the complex application are missing. But as officials expand the scope of whom they are arresting, detaining and deporting, lawyers fear their clients who have been waiting years for their asylum interviews may get caught up in the effort to conduct mass deportations.
Asylum is a form of protection granted to those who either have already entered the U.S. or are at a port of entry, having left their home country. After an application is filed, applicants receive work permits, pay taxes and can enroll in school.
"You're literally making documented people, again, undocumented, and they're already in here," said Michelle Marty Rivera, an immigration attorney who has dozens of clients who have received these letters. "You are canceling employment authorization. You're virtually converting people that are following the normal traditional asylum rules and leaving them without a status and without protection and asking them to show their faces to ICE."
Lawyers told NPR that in some cases, their clients may have been marked for "expedited removal" when they first entered the country. That is a form of deportation for people who have been in the U.S. for less than two years.
When asked about the asylum application dismissals, USCIS spokesman Matthew Tragesser said that if upon reviewing an application, USCIS discovers that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or Customs and Border Protection designated a person as in "expedited removal," USCIS administratively closes the application due to a lack of jurisdiction.
"This is a long-standing practice that is not new," Tragesser said. Per USCIS' process, the credible fear interview is key to pulling someone out of expedited removal prior to filing for asylum.
"The credible fear [interview] is considered a screening tool. And essentially there's a higher standard that when someone achieves that, then they can then go through the asylum process," said Morgan Bailey, a former USCIS official who served under both Trump and Biden, adding that for the last 15 years, the agency has not been able to keep up with the number of asylum-seekers who need credible fear interviews. "There aren't enough asylum officers to cover the workload, but there has also been such an increase in the number of asylum applications."
But now, immigration attorneys are warning that immigrants are facing the consequences of that shortage.
Asylum-seekers are bounced around the system
There are different versions of the letters that asylum applicants received, and NPR has reviewed some of them. Applicants began receiving them in July. The letters say that all processing of their asylum application is terminated. In some letters, applicants are told to await a notice from ICE about when their credible fear interview will be scheduled. In others, the letters tell them to report to ICE first and request the interview. Some are not clear on next steps.
Attorney Maria Florencia Garcia has one client who entered through the southern border and was originally put into expedited removal but was released into the U.S. before he received his interview.
"Once he was released, they did schedule a credible fear interview, but [it] was canceled. We tried to get a reschedule for a couple of years. It never happened," Florencia Garcia said, adding that they applied for asylum anyway because that must be filed within a year of being in the country. But in recent weeks, that client got the letter notifying them of the dismissal.
"He's unable to work. He's not going to be able to renew his employment authorization card," Florencia Garcia said. "The only way that he's going to be able to proceed is by showing up to ICE, telling them that he has a fear of return, and that will likely get him detained."
Arno Lemus, another immigration attorney, sees this effort from the second Trump administration as an attempt to reclassify a certain set of asylum applicants who primarily came in during the Biden years.
"They're just doing the process that was allotted to them that was legal and provided to them the moment that they presented themselves in the U.S.," Lemus said, noting that some of his clients have also received the letters. "And now the government's wanting to retroactively go back."
Lemus agrees with USCIS that the policy is not necessarily new — the credible fear interviews are the prerequisite to filing for asylum. But like other attorneys, Lemus said he has clients who have been waiting for upwards of six years for their asylum case to be reviewed.
"The issue is that people were already released into the U.S. They've already established years of processing. They've paid taxes. They've got jobs. Some of them have made investments in the U.S.," Lemus said.
Risk of detention is higher than in the past
The Trump administration this summer unveiled a new policy requiring immigrants who entered the country illegally to be put in detention without an opportunity for release while they fight their cases.
Immigration lawyers told NPR that they are concerned that their clients, who were awaiting their asylum interviews, will get detained if they report to ICE to schedule their credible fear interviews.
"There's a lack of trust. There's a lot of uncertainty that makes people afraid. It makes people not want to fight their cases, whether they're strong or not," said Florencia Garcia. "They just don't want to risk it."
ICE has increased the number of arrests at immigration courts, and high-profile worksite enforcement operations have left many afraid.
"You go to court — you get detained; you go to your ICE appointment — you get detained; you go to work — you get detained; you apply for asylum — you were processed incorrectly," Lemus said. "You just can't do anything."
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