If you are one of the 3+ million people waiting for your case in Immigration Court or at the Asylum Office, you might ask yourself, Why is my case taking so long? Of course you know the basic reason: Too many cases and too few people to work on those cases. But why is the system designed this way? Why can’t we have enough Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers so that cases are processed in a timely manner?
Here’s my theory: The system was purposefully created to make you wait. (more…)
The Associated Press recently reported that DHS will implement a “limited experiment” to provide detained migrants at the border with “access to legal counsel.” The new approach will start with a “tiny number of migrants,” and then perhaps expand from there. DHS is partnering with an as-yet-unnamed organization to supply the attorneys, who will help with credible fear interviews (initial evaluations of asylum eligibility for newly arriving migrants). The program is part of DHS’s efforts to accommodate the end of Title 42, which had restricted the number of people eligible to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, and which is expected to wrap up in a few weeks.
This new “limited experiment” calls to mind the ongoing effort by advocates to create an immigration public defender’s service, which would provide everyone in Immigration Court access to a lawyer. These efforts have not made much progress, and currently, very few noncitizens in Immigration Court receive a government-appointed attorney.
Here, I want to discuss the benefits of universal representation for asylum seekers, including those in court and at the Asylum Office. I also want to suggest an alternative to representation by lawyers, who are expensive and relatively scarce. (more…)
USCIS recently released some new information to Congress about the affirmative asylum backlog, and–surprise, surprise–the news is not good. The backlog continues to grow at a record-setting pace, meaning that under the agency’s last-in, first-out (LIFO) policy where new cases receive priority over old cases, those waiting for an interview are falling further and further behind. Worse, USCIS has indicated that they do not have the resources to reduce the backlog, and they don’t expect to receive those resources any time soon. (more…)
Here’s a common situation: A person files for asylum at the Asylum Office and her case is pending for years. During that time, she marries someone who does not have immigration status in the U.S., and she wants to add her spouse to her pending asylum application. And here’s another (less common) scenario: A person has a pending asylum application and the person’s child arrives in the United States and wants to join their parent’s case. Today, we’ll discuss how to add a dependent to an existing asylum case. (more…)
I recently saw a shocking statistic: 76% of cases denied by the Asylum Office and referred to Immigration Court were granted by Immigration Judges. If this number is accurate (and the source–TRAC Immigration–has always been very reliable), it means that IJs essentially overrule Asylum Officer denials in 3 out of 4 cases. Put another way, Immigration Judges are finding that Asylum Officers make the wrong decision in most of their cases. Can this really be true? What’s going on here? (more…)
If you are reading this blog (which presumably, you are), you already know about the massive delays at our nation’s Asylum Offices. There are currently about 543,000 pending cases, and some applicants have been waiting for an interview for six, seven, eight years or longer. Given that life happens during this long wait, applicants sometimes want to withdraw their application for asylum. In this post, we’ll talk about when it might be appropriate to withdraw a case and how to do that. (more…)
This post is by Larry Gollub, who writes: I first encountered a proposal to create a professional corps of asylum adjudicators while in law school in 1985 and immediately knew that was what I wanted to do. I had to wait till 1991 for the government to create the asylum corps, but was hired with the second wave of new officers in 1992, serving with the asylum corps in one capacity or another until my retirement in 2015. I was asked to return to the training program on a part time basis in 2017 and stayed there through 2019. After returning to retirement, I worked with a group from the Asylum Officers union to draft Amicus Briefs to be filed in numerous court cases challenging Trump Administration policy changes. My main contribution was my detailed knowledge of the history of the asylum program.
About a dozen years ago, while researching just what the public thought an Asylum Officer did, I came across this post, by a person calling herself Lucette, in an online discussion thread conveniently titled, “Asylum Officer Qualifications”:
I am an immigration attorney with 3 years experience in Immigration Law and an interest in asylum law. I have successfully represented asylum applicants before CIS and in Immigration Court over the past three years. I am interested in a position as an asylum officer and I am wondering whether anyone would be so kind as to tell me whether my qualifications are such that I would be a viable candidate?
Lucette was constantly being passed over in her applications for employment as an Asylum Officer (“AO”) and wanted to know why. (more…)
On October 27, 2022, a group of torture survivors held a protest outside the Arlington Asylum Office. The protesters were asylum seekers who have been waiting for five years or more for an interview. Their request was simple: Please interview me and give me a decision in my asylum case. (more…)
I wrote last time about recent updates from the Asylum Division. Here, I want to focus on one element of those updates: How the Asylum Offices are dealing with asylum applications from Afghan evacuees.
Since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in August 2021, about 88,000 Afghans have been evacuated by the U.S. government and brought to our country. These are generally people who cooperated or worked with the United States or the prior Afghan government, plus their immediate family members. These Afghans would be at risk of harm or death in their country due to their affiliation with the United States or the prior government of Afghanistan.
Ideally, we would have brought these people here and given them permanent status, so they could feel stable and safe, and so they could start rebuilding their lives. Unfortunately, that is not what happened. A bill to regularize the status of Afghan evacuees–the Afghan Adjustment Act–has stalled in Congress, and so the evacuees are left in limbo, not knowing whether they can stay or whether they will have to leave. As a result, many evacuees have no other option but to seek asylum. This situation is absurd and insulting, and–adding injury to insult–the Asylum Offices are mishandling the Afghan’s applications. (more…)
In a meeting held earlier this month, we received some updates from the Asylum Division. Although Acting Director Sue Raufer could point to some positive developments in asylum world, the news is generally pretty bleak. In a development that will shock no one, the worst news relates to the backlog, which is growing at an unprecedented rate.
Dear Asylum Office –
Did you ever have an annoying friend who keeps wanting to tell you what’s what? Who couldn’t accept that you’re not interested in his advice about how to improve your life? Who blathers on about this-and-that without noticing that you’ve nodded off? I get it. But here I am anyway. The fact is, my dear Asylum Office, you’re a mess and something needs to be done.
Please don’t misunderstand when I say that you’re a mess. I am speaking as a friend. Or maybe a frenemy. According to your own data, there are now (as of December 2021) more than 438,500 cases pending at our nation’s Asylum Offices. Many applicants have been waiting for years without an interview and with no real hope of receiving a decision any time soon. The good news is that you’ve hired 80 brand-spankin’ new officers to interview older (pre-2016) cases. But the concern is that these officers will not be used efficiently or fairly. Luckily, I am here to offer some unsolicited advice about maximizing efficiency and protecting due process of law. (more…)
It’s the rare occasion when I can report some good news, but it seems that USCIS is taking action to help people in the affirmative asylum backlog. According to the most recent data (from December 2021), there are about 438,500 cases pending at the Asylum Office. The large majority of these applicants have not yet received interviews. Now, USCIS has hired an additional 80 Asylum Officers who will be dedicated to interviewing applicants who filed for asylum on or before January 1, 2016, meaning that they will be interviewing asylum seekers who have been waiting the longest.
Here, we’ll discuss what this means for those applicants, and also for people who filed after January 1, 2016. I’ll also make some suggestions about how to schedule these interviews in a way that is fair to applicants and to their lawyers (i.e., I will beg USCIS to have mercy on us). (more…)
Back in 2019, the Trump Administration ended the long-standing practice of releasing data about our nation’s Asylum Offices. The Biden Administration has not seemed particularly eager to restore transparency, but now, a year and a half after President Biden took office, we finally have some new data from the Asylum Division. Mind you, the data is only current as of December 31, 2021, but we are told more information will be released soon. Since “soon” in asylum world tends to mean “not any time soon,” I’ve decided to write about the information we have now, rather than wait for a second data dump, which may or may not be released in the near future.
The new data gives us a lot to discuss and sheds some light on why cases are moving so slowly. It also raises questions about how the asylum system is working–or not working. (more…)
It’s common these days to find asylum seekers at the Asylum Office and in Immigration Court who filed their asylum application, form I-589, five, six, seven or more years ago. During that time, some information on the form becomes out of date. Also, new events occur which need to be added to the form. What is the best and most efficient way to update your asylum application at the Asylum Office and in court? (more…)
Though I haven’t seen any data to back this up, it seems to me that second interviews at the Asylum Office are becoming more common. I’ve been hearing reports about second (or third) interviews from others and we are seeing it in our own practice as well. In this post, we will talk about the second interview: Why is it needed? What happens at a second interview? How should you prepare? (more…)