DHS Announces Plan to Speed Asylum Cases; Biden Admin Seeks to Speed Review of Asylum Cases

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DHS announces plan to speed asylum cases:

The Biden administration announced plans Wednesday to speed up asylum decisions for migrants who sneak across the border and then demand protection, a move that could result in hundreds of thousands more people winning asylum each year.

Under the proposal, the job of deciding asylum claims at the border would shift from immigration judges to Homeland Security Department staffers, who are seen as more lenient than the judges. The asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services could make decisions at the border rather than putting migrants through court proceedings, which can take years to complete.

The plan would also give Homeland Security legal authority to catch and release people who ask for asylum when “detention is unavailable or impracticable.”

The change was proposed at the urging of immigrant rights activists and was in the works for months. It still needs to go through the regulatory process, and the public will be able to submit comments.

But the administration seems confident it will end up approving the rule no matter what the public says. The Washington Times obtained an email USCIS Director Ur Jaddou sent to employees on Wednesday saying the agency is already moving to hire people to work on the cases they expect to develop from the changes. --->READ MORE HERE

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Biden administration seeks to speed review of asylum cases:

The Biden administration on Wednesday proposed a rule that would streamline the asylum process, an effort to remove those fleeing persecution from an immigration court system backlog that can leave them in limbo for years on end.

The proposal, a joint effort from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, allows most of the asylum process to be decided by officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), who conduct the first interview with those who say they cannot safely return to their country.

Though largely a bureaucratic shift, the shuffle could help asylum-seekers more quickly gain status instead of funneling them into the 1.3 million immigration court case backlog that would take four years to get through even without any new cases.

“A system that takes years to reach a result is simply not a functional one,” the agencies wrote in the rule. “It delays justice and certainty for those who need protection, and it encourages abuse by those who will not qualify for protection and smugglers who exploit the delay for profit.” --->READ MORE HERE

Follow link below to a related story:

US moves to cut backlog of asylum cases at US-Mexico border

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