Biden administration pauses asylum processing reforms for migrants 

The Biden administration paused an effort to reform asylum requests at the border as it prepared for the upcoming end of Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Wednesday. 

The measure was first introduced last year to allow U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service officers to grant or deny asylum claims made by migrants at the border—powers that were previously limited to immigration judges at the Department of Justice and could be a years-long process. 

According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, the pause is intended “to ensure operational readiness," as the agency prepares for the end of the Trump-era immigration policy Title 42, which allowed border officers to expel migrants to prevent the spread of the pandemic. 

"In light of ongoing border-related planning and to ensure operational readiness ahead of the lifting of the Title 42 public health order, ICE and CBP will temporarily pause new referrals of potential Asylum Merits Interview (AMI) credible fear cases and USCIS will temporarily pause scheduling any new AMIs. Referrals are anticipated to continue in the near future," the spokesperson said.

The program will resume in the “near future” and the changes will not affect the migrants who have already been scheduled for an interview, the spokesperson added. 

The reforms were originally implemented to help expedite asylum cases and clear the massive backlog of cases waiting to be processed. So far, the number of asylum seekers waiting for a hearing is nearly 1.6 million—the largest total number of pending asylum applications on record, according to researchers from Syracuse University. 

“Where the majority of cases do not even have their asylum hearing scheduled… the guesstimate of average wait times nationally is currently 1,572 days or 4.3 years. Currently, the Immigration Court based in Omaha, Nebraska has the longest wait time averaging 2,168 days,” the researchers said. 

Last week, the Biden administration announced it was planning to test expedited asylum screenings for undocumented migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.  

“This administration will continue to look at every tool available to make asylum processing more efficient while upholding due process and other protections, as Congress refuses to act to fix our decades-old broken immigration system,” Homeland Security said in a statement.