This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

By Stephen Prager

The Trump administration published a new regulation on Monday that will immediately allow it to potentially send almost a third of asylum applicants straight into deportation proceedings without an interview to evaluate their claims.

US asylum law requires the government to give asylum seekers a “reasonable opportunity” to present evidence that they face persecution in their country of origin as a result of race, religion, nationality, social group membership, or political opinion.

For more than three decades, US Citizenship & Immigration Services explicitly stated that this process includes the “right” to an interview, where those seeking asylum have the opportunity to describe the persecution they fear and provide facts that may not have been included in their written asylum application.

But an interim final rule is scheduled to take effect on Tuesday that will scrap this right, allowing USCIS to skip the interview and refer applicants directly to immigration judges based solely on other documents they have submitted, which are often prepared without the help of an attorney in a language the applicant may not speak fluently.

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In the filing for the new rule, USCIS acknowledged that applicants may be more likely to provide greater detail in face-to-face interviews, but that the overwhelming backlog of cases makes this unsustainable.

The filing states that the new rule will “more quickly place certain aliens into removal proceedings” at the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), the agency within the Department of Justice (DOJ) that runs the federal immigration court system.

While these officials are referred to as “judges,” they are really part of the executive branch, appointed at the discretion of the attorney general and not subject to any Senate confirmation process.

Critics say that under President Donald Trump, these appointees have been selected to carry out his restrictive immigration agenda.

For these positions, which the administration has advertised as “deportation judges,” The Washington Post found that two-thirds of those appointed as of April 2026 had no immigration law experience. Immigration judges granted asylum in fewer than 5% of cases in February 2026, compared with 48% in 2024.

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In September, the Trump DOJ gave immigration judges broader discretion to toss out claims by allowing them to “pretermit” those that they decide are “legally deficient,” meaning that applicants can be deported without a full hearing.

As it has carried out its “mass deportation” campaign, the administration has often violated the due process of immigrants in the US by removing them without notice or hearings, detaining longtime residents without the opportunity to secure bond, restricting access to legal counsel, and using mass court procedures to prevent claims from being meaningfully heard in court.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, said that the new rule will allow USCIS to “deny hundreds of thousands of applications without an interview, sending applicants directly to deportation proceedings.”

According to the filing, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that the new rule could affect as many as 444,724 pending cases and roughly 132,000 future applicants each year.

“This means many people will never get a chance to argue their case,” Reichlin-Melnick said.

[KS]

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