Asylum

Recent Features

All Asylum Content

Publication Date: 
May 9, 2017
Detained asylum seekers encounter numerous challenges, including the following problems detailed in this report.
Publication Date: 
May 18, 2016
First-hand accounts from Central American women and their family members reveal the dangerous and bleak circumstances of life these women and their children faced upon return to their home countries...
Publication Date: 
July 22, 2015

For decades, the U.S. refugee protection system has been a symbol of the nation’s generosity and openness to the world’s persecuted. Yet since Congress’ enactment of the Illegal Immigration Reform...

Publication Date: 
May 21, 2014
This paper addresses these issues, summarizes the concerns and experiences of numerous advocates in the field, and concludes that the credible fear and asylum process poses obstacles for applicants...
Publication Date: 
February 1, 2005
The efficiency of the asylum program depends in large part on a fully staffed and adequately funded Asylum Corps that evaluates asylum claims thoroughly and expeditiously.
July 29, 2020

The American Immigration Council submitted a written statement to the House Committee on Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship for a July 29, 2020 hearing on "Oversight of U....

July 21, 2020

The American Immigration Council signed on to a letter calling on Congress to demand greater transparency from Immigration and Customs Enforcement regarding Cameroonian and other Black...

July 17, 2020

The American Immigration Council joined a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security calling on the release of all families held at all three Immigration and Customs...

July 15, 2020
The American Immigration Council submitted these comments opposing bars to asylum proposed by the Trump administration.
This Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeks to uncover information about the Migration Protection Protocols (MPP)—also known as the "Remain in Mexico" program.
May 12, 2020

The Council and the law firm WilmerHale filed a petition with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) challenging the requirement that asylum seekers...

Publication Date: 
January 31, 2020

The American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association submitted an amicus brief in Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center v. Wolf, a case filed by the American...

January 23, 2020

The Trump administration has proposed amending regulations that affect asylum eligibility. If implemented, the regulations would shut America’s doors to many of those most in need of protection....

The Migrant Protection Protocols—also known as Remain in Mexico—raises alarming safety and due process questions. However, the government has kept information on how the program is being implemented.
November 21, 2019
The American Immigration Council submitted a written statement to the House Committee on Homeland Security for a November 19, 2019 hearing on the “Examining the Human Rights and Legal Implications of DHS’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy.”
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...

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...

February 27, 2023

The New York Times has published a horrifying investigation into the exploitation of children who migrated to the United States as unaccompanied minors. The investigation by Hannah Dreier finds...

November 15, 2022
Judge Emmet G. Sullivan issued a decision vacating and ending Title 42, more than two and a half years after the purported public health policy went into effect.
October 24, 2022
The American Immigration Council alongside responded to the Biden Administration’s announcement of a parole program to protect some Venezuelan nationals with ties to the U.S., expansion of Title 42 to expel Venezuelans who cross the border without prior authorization, and nearly 65,000 added visas under the H-2B program.
August 9, 2022
The American Immigration Council urges the Biden administration to move as quickly as possible to readmit all those who were sent to Mexico under both the reinstated Remain in Mexico program and the original program.
June 30, 2022
The U.S. Supreme Court allows the Biden administration’s efforts to terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols—an illegal Trump-era policy that sent thousands of people seeking humanitarian protection to dangerous areas of Mexico to await their asylum hearings.
April 1, 2022
The Biden administration announced today plans to end a border expulsions policy known as Title 42 by May 23. This policy allowed the U.S. government to turn people away at the U.S southern border over 1.7 million times in the past two years under the guise of protecting the country from COVID-19.
March 24, 2022
The American Immigration Council and the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA) responded to today’s release of an interim final rule related to asylum procedures with concern. The rule is being published in draft form and is slated to take effect in 60 days, however additional public comment is being accepted for 60 days.
December 23, 2021
A federal court denied preliminary relief in a lawsuit challenging USCIS's extreme delays and failure to process work permit renewals for asylum seekers. The judge declined to order USCIS to process work permit renewal applications within the 180-day automatic extension of employment authorization.
December 21, 2021
The American Immigration Council filed a FOIA lawsuit against CBP requesting information about the agency’s implementation of CBP One— an app designed to help process individuals entering the United States including asylum seekers—that has raised concerns among immigration and privacy advocates.
November 11, 2021
Five workers in the United States filed a nationwide class action lawsuit today challenging unlawful log-jam and extreme delays at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that have resulted in the government’s failure to process the work authorization renewals for asylum seekers.
October 29, 2021
The Biden administration announced that DHS will issue a new memo to formally terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols. It is an important step towards ensuring that the MPP program never returns.
May 9, 2024
Civil rights groups filed a federal lawsuit today to block SF 2340, one of the worst, most far-reaching immigration laws ever passed in the state of Iowa.
May 3, 2024

When someone crosses the border to seek asylum in the United States, they often first go through a credible fear interview (CFI). An asylum officer evaluates a person’s fear of returning to their...

Publication Date: 
March 22, 2024
The practice alert explains the scope of a class settlement agreement in Padilla v. ICE that provides protections for detained asylum seekers who face prolonged delays before receiving their credible fear interviews.
March 1, 2024

For decades, the Catholic nonprofit Annunciation House has worked to support migrants in El Paso, Texas. It’s provided shelter, food and services to countless people who have just arrived in the...

February 22, 2024

A report released this month by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found that refugees and asylees have generated tens of billions of dollars more in local, state, and federal...

February 5, 2024
On Sunday night, a bipartisan group of senators released the “Emergency National Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024." Jeremy Robbins, Executive Director of the American Immigration Council, responds to this controversial legislation that faces an uncertain future.
Publication Date: 
February 1, 2024
Under the “Migrant Protection Protocols”, individuals who arrive at the southern border and ask for asylum (either at a port of entry or after crossing the border between ports of entry) are given...
Publication Date: 
January 15, 2024
Asylum seekers must navigate a difficult and complex process that can involve multiple government agencies. This fact sheet provides an overview of the asylum system in the United States, including...
Publication Date: 
January 12, 2024

Parole is an essential component of U.S. immigration law. It can be an important tool to manage the processing of migrants at U.S. borders; a powerful response to humanitarian crisis; and a way to...

December 13, 2023

The Biden administration signaled on December 12 that it is willing to make disastrous—and permanent—changes to asylum and immigration policy to obtain temporary military aid for Ukraine, Israel,...

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