What Trump’s asylum change means for people seeking protection
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For people seeking asylum in the United States, an interview with a trained asylum officer is usually their first opportunity to plead their case, a chance to explain why returning home would put them in danger. But under a new Trump administration policy, some applicants may never get that interview. Instead, their cases can now be sent directly to immigration court, where removal proceedings can begin. For many, that will mean deportation. Hello and welcome to USA Today's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor.
What changed in the asylum process under the new Trump administration policy?
Today is Monday, August 3rd, 2026. USA Today national reporter Christopher Kahn has been reporting on the change and what it could mean for people seeking protection in the U.S. Christopher, it's great to speak with you again.
Yeah, good to be here.
Let's start with what's new. What exactly has changed in the asylum process and who does it affect?
So to start, asylum is the legal protection given to people who are at the border or inside the country who have a legitimate fear of persecution in their home country based on a few criteria, including race, religion or political opinion. Now, there's usually two ways someone can obtain asylum. A person who is in removal proceedings already may apply for asylum defensively by filing an application with an immigration judge in immigration court, and that's overseen by the Department of Justice. Now, a person who is not in removal proceedings can actively apply for asylum directly with the Citizenship and Immigration Services, and that's USCIS. And in that process, they have that opportunity to do an interview with a trained USCIS asylum officer, and who would assess the claim and either grant asylum, or if that person doesn't meet the requirements for asylum, they would send those cases to immigration court.
Now, so this rule changes that policy and pretty much scraps the requirement for those interviews to take place, which are really kind of integral to the process.
As the Trump administration shared why they've made this change.
The Department of Homeland Security said that this change was made to reduce the significant backlog in the asylum system. And so there's currently about 1.4 million cases pending. And the USCIS director, Joseph Edlow, also put out a statement. He said that the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization and illegitimate claims for protection. So he says that this change is also a way to address some of those issues.
Your story draws a sharp contrast between those asylum interviews and immigration court. Christopher, what's different about those two settings for the person applying for asylum?
Yeah, so you're exactly right. The two processes are very different. So in what's called the affirmative asylum process, which is the one that in which someone applies proactively with USCIS, a trained asylum agent will look at the case, speaks directly with the migrant and their attorney if they have one. And really, the purpose of this is to understand the claim, see whether the person meets the criteria for protection. And it's described even by the government as a non-adversarial interview. That's kind of all about fact finding. And in immigration court, it is an adversarial process. Migrants have to prove their case before an immigration judge, a lot of whom don't have the same specialized training.
as those USCIS officers. And there's also government lawyers who play a prosecutorial role in trying to get asylum claims denied by the judge. So it's a much more challenging environment for someone to be able to prove their asylum case.
And then I wanted to get your thoughts on what that difference can mean for someone trying to explain why they need protection.
Yeah, so it could mean a larger chance that your case is denied. So what we've seen is that across the immigration court system, asylum approval rates are down significantly. And some groups put that at an estimate around that they're at their lowest point in at least two decades. Immigration lawyers I spoke with said that migrants have a much better chance of getting their asylum case approved by a USCIS agent just because they're much more familiar with the
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