The Biden Administration has issued a new rule that will allow ‘asylum officers’ to adjudicate the claims of potential asylees at the southern border; immigration court judges in the past have typically held this role.
According to the administration, the new process is an effort to shorten the amount of time between illegal aliens crossing the border and a ruling on whether they should be deported or allowed to seek asylum. In turn, this process is also being sold as a way to diminish the 1.2 million case backlog in the U.S. immigration courts.
Under this new policy, ‘asylum officers’ will be able to grant protections to any illegal aliens who claim a credible fear of returning to their home country after illegally crossing the southern border; the protections will allow the aliens to bypass the immigration courts altogether.
If the ‘asylum officer’ cannot determine if the alien meets the credible fear standard, the alien’s case will be sent before an immigration judge who has 90 days to decide if the alien can stay or must be deported.
“The current system for handling asylum claims at our borders has long needed repair,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Currently, the U.S. does have a limited number of ‘asylum officials’, which would limit the number of aliens able to take advantage of this new program; however, the positions can be filled by DHS at the direction of the Secretary.
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Updated: Thu, Mar 24th 2022 @ 6:11pm EDT