Asylum applications will be reviewed again for most countries : NPR
An asylum seeker whose appointment to enter the United States was canceled waits to speak with a Mexican immigration officer while he reviews the CBP One application at the El Chaparral border port in Tijuana, Mexico, January 2025.
Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto via Getty Images
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Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The Department of Homeland Security has lifted its total ban on reviewing asylum applications, although the pause remains in effect in about 40 countries.
THE The Trump administration in November on break processing some 4 million asylum applications filed with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency that oversees the processing of visa, naturalization and asylum applications. The pause is part of a series of immigration restrictions after an Afghan national shot and killed two National Guardsmen in Washington, D.C., on November 26, 2025. One of the guard members died the next day from his injuries.
At the time, the Trump administration called the move a national security necessity. Kristi Noem, then DHS secretary, said the pause was indefinite while the agency found a way to clear its backlog of nearly 4 million cases.
The suspension of treatment will remain for three dozen countries that have been labeled as “high risk“and I United States travel restrictions. The list mainly includes countries in Africa, as well as Iran, Afghanistan and Syria.
Various other pauses on legal migration are still in effect, including a pause on the issuance of immigrant visas. for 75 countriesand a pause on all immigration applications from countries covered by the travel ban.
“USCIS has lifted the judicial hold on carefully screened asylum seekers from non-high risk countries,” a DHS spokesperson wrote in a statement to NPR, adding that maximum screening and monitoring would continue. “This decision allows resources to focus on rigorous and ongoing national security and public safety monitoring for higher risk cases.”
Towards the end of last year, DHS has started taking steps to pause again and examine these legal migration routes. USCIS announced that it will review the status of everyone admitted to the United States as a refugee under the Biden administration, reopening these cases. Some of these cases have been referred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation.
