DHS eliminated pre-referral asylum interviews, fast-tracking up to 444,000 cases to immigration court

On July 27, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced an interim final rule ending the longstanding practice of interviewing affirmative asylum applicants before deciding whether to refer their cases to immigration court, effective the following day. Affirmative applicants — people who proactively sought asylum after entering the country lawfully — had long been guaranteed a non-adversarial interview with a trained asylum officer to establish their claim before any referral to the adversarial immigration court system. USCIS wrote in the rule that it would "no longer offer interviews to all affirmative applicants prior to referral" to the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and separately asserted there was never a "statutory right to an interview or a requirement to conduct one."

USCIS framed the change as a response to a backlog of 1.4 million pending asylum cases, estimating that up to 444,000 of those cases could be affected and that roughly 132,000 new applicants a year would now be referred directly to immigration court without an interview. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow said the asylum system has been "exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization," and that resources should instead go to "timely adjudication" of legitimate claims.

Immigration lawyers and advocates said the change strips a key procedural safeguard rather than reducing the underlying caseload, since it merely shifts cases from USCIS to an immigration court system with its own backlog of roughly 3 million cases and no right to appointed counsel. Attorney Reuben Kerben, who has clients who waited as long as 15 years for an asylum interview, called the change "another tool to keep the deportation machine humming," noting that applicants will face government prosecutors in adversarial removal proceedings without first having had a chance to establish their claim in a private, non-adversarial setting. The rule takes effect July 28, 2026, and is open for public comment for 60 days before a final rule is issued.