Asylum

The immigration laws and regulations provide some avenues to apply for lawful status from within the U.S. or to seek relief from deportation.  The eligibility requirements for these benefits and relief can be stringent, and the immigration agencies often adopt overly restrictive interpretations of the requirements.  Learn about advocacy and litigation that has been and can be undertaken to ensure that noncitizens have a fair chance to apply for the benefits and relief for which they are eligible.  

Recent Features

All Asylum Content

October 8, 2021

In September, nearly 15,000 Haitians arrived near Del Rio, Texas seeking asylum in the United States. But rather than allowing them to seek protection, as is their right under United States law,...

September 22, 2021

The Departments of State and Homeland Security announced recently that they will be accepting new applications for the Central American Minors (CAM) Program, created to process immigrant children...

September 21, 2021

Roughly 14,000 Haitians arrived at the border across from Del Rio, Texas in mid-September and walked across the Rio Grande to seek asylum. Many first left Haiti in 2010 following a devastating...

September 7, 2021

A federal court concluded Thursday that the U.S. government’s turning back of asylum seekers at ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border—primarily through a practice called metering—not only...

August 25, 2021

The Supreme Court refused to block an order to reinstate the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. The decision comes after a Texas judge halted the government...

August 19, 2021

The Biden administration announced this week that it will propose a new rule to speed up the fair and humane processing of asylum claims of people arriving at the U.S. border. The issue has been...

June 29, 2021

How well should someone be able to remember every detail of a traumatic event? The U.S. government argues people should have a near perfect memory to obtain asylum—even if they experienced the...

June 23, 2021

Asylum seekers who were ordered deported for missing their U.S. court hearings under the Trump administration’s so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)—informally known as the “Remain in...

June 17, 2021

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on June 16 that he is restoring a vital lifeline to survivors of gender-based violence, gang violence, and violence on account of family relationships....

June 16, 2021

Twice each year, the federal government publishes a “regulatory agenda,” a preview of all the proposals that are in the pipeline to become federal regulations. Last week, the Biden administration...

May 19, 2023

If you are an asylum seeker in the United States who cannot afford an attorney, your chance of finding pro bono assistance is now slimmer than ever. As the number of cases in immigration court has...

May 11, 2023

Back in February, when the Biden administration proposed a new regulation that would essentially restrict the vast majority of border crossers from qualifying for asylum, we broke it down with a...

April 19, 2023

On Monday, April 17, the House GOP introduced its first comprehensive border bill of the 118th Congress. The bill comes after months of disagreement within the caucus surrounding legislative...

April 10, 2023

The Biden administration is yet again turning to the Trump playbook as it tries to slap together a border crackdown to succeed the end of the Title 42 “public health” order next month. The latest...

April 6, 2023

The public has spoken: an asylum transit ban was bad policy during the Trump era, and it’s bad policy now. On February 21, the Biden administration released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking laying...

March 29, 2023

On Monday night, 39 migrants died, and another 27 were seriously injured, in a fire in a Mexican detention center in Ciudad Juarez. The migrants—most of them from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras...

March 29, 2023

The United States and Canada announced the expansion of their Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA) last week during President Biden’s visit to Canada. Under U.S. law, a so-called “Safe Third...

Records show how the USCIS’s response to the high volume of humanitarian parole applications contributed to the massive delays faced by Afghans.
March 15, 2023

The Biden administration announced on Monday that it would grant another year of temporary legal status for some Ukrainians who fled the Russian invasion for the United States before April 25,...

February 28, 2023

In January and February of this year, the Biden administration announced new policies to process individuals seeking asylum at ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border. A key component of these...

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