The Trump administration has made major changes to the U.S. asylum system, but a future administration could immediately reverse those reforms, cautions immigration expert Lora Ries.
Even if the Trump administration issued a rule to change the way asylum claims are processed, “a future administration can overdo a rule, and so what’s really needed is statute for more permanency,” Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told The Daily Signal.
When President Donald Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, there were about 3.5 million pending asylum claims before the immigration courts, according to the Congressional Research Service. Today, there are still more than 2.3 million asylum claims before the immigration courts, and another 1.5 million pending with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, according to Art Arthur, a former immigration judge.
In the early months of his second term, Trump has made changes to the U.S. asylum system to allow for asylum claims to be processed more quickly.
Changes to Asylum System Under Trump
In April, the Justice Department issued guidance to the Executive Office for Immigration Review allowing for asylum claims to be dismissed if a migrant fails to provide sufficient evidence to meet the standard for an asylum hearing.
This month, Attorney General Pam Bondi took two immigration cases and used them to issue guidance on how immigration judges should interpret a key asylum statute.
The U.S. asylum statute allows asylum to be granted if a person’s life is believed to be at risk in their home country due to their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
Race, religion, nationality, and political affiliation are “pretty straightforward,” Arthur explains, but “membership of a particular social group is wide open.”
“Probably, you know, 80% to 90% of the cases the clog up the [immigration] courts are people who allege that they are part of a particular social group,” said Arthur, who serves as a resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
What Bondi has done is narrow the definition of who is included in the “social group” category by saying migrants claiming asylum due to fear of gangs back home or fear of domestic violence do not constitute being a part of a specific social group and are therefore not eligible for asylum. This clarification is a return to an understanding of the U.S. immigration code held during the first Trump administration, but reversed during the Biden administration.
As such, permanent reform to the U.S. asylum system will require Congress to act.
Congress and Asylum Reform
Passing legislation to further define what is meant by a “social group” within the U.S. asylum statute would simply “become a Christmas tree with respect to various special-interest groups,” Arthur contended. Instead, “it may be better for Congress to just cut ‘particular social group’ from the definition.”
Ries agrees with Arthur, arguing that the U.S. asylum code needs to “get rid of membership in a particular social group, and just stick with the original objective: race, religion, nationality, [and] political opinion.”
The 119th Congress has not introduced a bill that would remove the “social group” category from the asylum statute, but Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., did introduce a bill in January aimed to reforming the U.S. asylum system. Her bill is called the Refugees Using Legal Entry Safely Act, or RULES Act, and it requires migrants to apply for asylum at a port of entry and denies parole into the U.S. while an asylum claim is being processed.
Furthermore, the bill would make illegal aliens apprehended in the U.S. ineligible for asylum and would deny asylum to those who have already applied and been denied.
The RULES Act is currently under review in the Judiciary committees of the House and Senate.
Broader reforms to asylum were included in the immigration bill known as HR 2 that first passed through the House in May 2023, but was stalled in the Democrat-controlled Senate. The current Congress has yet to take action on HR 2, but Ries predicted a new version of the bill will be introduced next year.
