DHS strips interview requirement for asylum seekers, expediting deportations

MANHATTAN (CN) — The Department of Homeland Security announced Monday it would be fast-tracking the asylum process, allowing the government to send asylum seekers directly to immigration court without first being interviewed about their applications.

The department claims the change, set to take effect on Tuesday, is designed to “reduce the backlog in the asylum system.” But immigration lawyers fear it will merely be used to speed up asylum rejections and subsequent deportations, raising due process concerns.

“In order to reduce the affirmative asylum backlog, improve efficiency of operations, safeguard national security and public safety and ensure consistency with agency priorities, USCIS will no longer offer interviews to all affirmative applicants prior to referral to [Executive Office for Immigration Review],” U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services, the DHS agency that handles asylum applications, wrote in the interim final rule.

It has been longstanding practice to afford affirmative asylum seekers — ones who proactively come to the United States seeking protection — a formal interview with immigration officials to address their credible fear of harm or persecution in their home countries. But DHS is now claiming there was never a “statutory right to an interview or a requirement to conduct one.”

“Through the rule, USCIS is also able to more quickly identify aliens that pose a danger to public safety or national security and place those aliens in removal proceedings, where his or her claim for asylum or other forms of relief can be more appropriately heard in an adversarial setting by an [immigration judge],” the federal agency wrote.

According to USCIS, the goal is to slow the accumulation of backlogged cases, which exceeded 1.4 million by the end of 2025. It estimates more than 444,000 of those cases may be impacted by the rule change.

And going forward, USCIS suspects more than 132,000 asylum seekers every year may now be referred straight to an immigration court without an interview.

USCIS Director Joseph Edlow claimed Monday the asylum system has long been “exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization.”

“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,” he said.

Immigration lawyer Reuben Kerben acknowledged the backlog — some of his clients have been waiting as long as 15 years for their asylum interview, he told Courthouse News on Monday. But with immigration judges under the Trump administration denying more asylum claims than ever, he said the latest rule change is just “another tool to keep the deportation machine humming.”

“They just want to get as many people into that deportation process as quickly as possible so they can be denied,” Kerben said.

Kerben warns the interim rule could have a sprawling impact on the wider U.S. economy, as it could leave many asylum seekers unable to secure work permits on the expedited timeline.

“Work permits for asylum seekers made a lot of sense,” he said. “These are marginalized victims that, while they’re waiting for their claim, are given an opportunity to work legally. These people were paying taxes, participating in the economy.”

During President Donald Trump’s second term, his Department of Justice has massively reshaped the immigration court system. In 2026 alone, it hired more than 150 immigration judges, whose backgrounds heavily skew toward former Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys and prosecutors.

The administration has subsequently fired more than 100 immigration judges, many of whom had backgrounds in immigrant defense or granted a higher-than-average number of asylum cases.

USCIS is accepting public, written comments on the new interim policy for the next 60 days. After that, it will issue a final rule.

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