Asylum seekers increasingly being detained and pressured to leave the U.S.

Asylum seekers without criminal records are being detained across the country as the Trump administration seeks to deport immigrants seeking legal avenues to remain in the United States. The move represents a major departure from previous practice, in which asylum seekers were allowed to work and build lives in American communities as their cases unfolded.

The arrests follow a pattern, lawyers and advocates told NBC News. One day, asylum seekers are reunited with their families, often after years of living in the United States. Then a ride or ride to work ends with them being inserted into ICE’s vast detention system. There, they face harsh conditions and a more confrontational immigration process, as well as pressure to self-deport, lawyers and families say. Their arrests were reported across the United States, including in Minnesota, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Maine, Alaska, Wisconsin, California and Texas.

Six of attorney Robin Nice’s asylum seekers were detained by ICE even though they had no criminal problems, she said, as a federal immigration enforcement operation swept through Maine in late January. Some were finishing their shift. One of them was driving to work. One of them was going to buy medicine and groceries. One was picked up while on his way to get a U.S. passport for his newborn.

“This is absolutely unprecedented,” Nice said, adding that until about six months ago, she felt confident telling her clients that if they had pending asylum applications, they did not have to worry about being detained. “We talked about it the same way as being struck by lightning.”

People from around the world come to the United States seeking asylum, some fleeing war, violence, or religious and political persecution. As of December, more than 2.3 million immigrants were awaiting asylum hearings, a number that has been increasing in recent years. The number of people granted asylum fluctuates from year to year. From October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025, more than 28,000 applicants out of more than 118,000 were granted asylum and nearly 5,000 received other immigration assistance. The administration says the backlog includes many “meritless requests.”

Lawyers and advocates say the new practice of detaining asylum seekers is harmful and unnecessary because the applicants are already known to the government and are subject to a legal process that involves going to all their government registrations. They say the administration places law-abiding immigrants in detention centers in inhumane conditions, where they don’t have enough medical care, don’t have access to their lawyers and are fed inedible food.

“It destroys people’s sense of stability as they try to do the right thing and pursue their demands for security in the United States,” said Elora Mukherjee, a professor at Columbia Law School and director of its Immigrant Rights Clinic. “I’ve had clients in detention, literally from New Jersey to Texas, who dropped their cases because the conditions were truly unbearable. »

A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson previously denied claims that there are “subprime conditions” in ICE detention centers.

DHS said in a statement that “a pending asylum application does not confer any type of legal status in the United States. If an individual enters our country illegally, they are subject to detention or removal. Every illegal alien is afforded due process.”

“USCIS’s top priority remains the screening and control of all aliens seeking to come to, live, or work in the United States,” the statement said, referring to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency responsible for legal immigration. The department declined to provide data on the number of asylum seekers with active cases who were detained under the Trump administration.

Although Nice managed to secure the release of its six clients, asylum seekers across the country remain in detention, including the husband of a woman named Tatiana.

She said the life she and her husband had built in Florida for their two daughters for more than 10 years was destroyed in December when, on his way to work as a handyman, her husband never came home. The family is seeking asylum after fleeing Ecuador and says they were threatened with death for expressing themselves politically. Tatiana, a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, an organization serving asylum seekers in the United States, asked that his full name not be used for fear of retaliation from immigration.

“You feel overwhelmed, suffocated. I’m a single mother now with my two daughters, trying to make ends meet, pay my rent, eat,” she told NBC News in Spanish, adding that she works 11 to 12 hours a day. “I’m counting every penny so I can cover everything.”

The detention also upended the life of his daughter, a high school student who dreams of going to college in the United States. The teenager is now looking for work to help her family. Tatiana worries that “college is coming soon and we just can’t afford it.”

“She tells me: ‘Mom, don’t worry, everything will be fine,’” Tatiana said, her voice breaking. “But I’m heartbroken, because I don’t know if everything will be okay.”

Since his arrest in December, Tatiana’s husband has been transferred to various detention centers, including the one in Florida known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” where detainees complain of unsanitary conditions, swarms of mosquitoes and lack of medical care. The administration has denied allegations about poor conditions at the facility.

“They kept bringing my husband the voluntary eviction documents,” Tatiana said.

They are still fighting to secure her husband’s release.

“He is devastated at how difficult everything is for us financially. He feels helpless,” she said. “We try to encourage him. We try to tell him that this won’t last forever and that God will give us a solution.”

The conditions were too harsh for César Pulido, who agreed in February to voluntarily leave the country after more than six months of detention.

He and his son, César Andrés Caicedo Hincapié, 19, were in the middle of their asylum case when ICE arrested Pulido for reasons they say were never clearly explained to them.

“When we came here we had nothing, so we started building our life from scratch,” Caicedo Hincapié told NBC News. “School was hard, work for him was hard, culture and language were hard. Then we would get somewhere, we were already building something. It happened, and it was like I stopped my life. It stopped my father’s life.”

Today, Caicedo Hincapié, who worked long days in a warehouse to struggle to pay rent and lawyer fees, lost the work permit granted as part of his father’s asylum application, which resulted in his agreement to self-deport. It is still unclear when his father will be deported from the United States.

Pulido told NBC News from a detention center in Texas that he and his son fled Colombia following death threats amid political persecution. They did everything they could to make sure they were “doing things the right way” in the United States, he said in Spanish.

“I have not committed any crime here or in my country, but I have no idea how long I have been detained here,” he said before agreeing to self-deport.

“I am being judged as if I were a criminal,” he said. “Here they treat me like a criminal.”

DHS said in a statement without providing evidence that Pulido was “an associate of a South American theft group operating throughout Southern California.” The agency did not say whether Pulido had been charged or convicted of a crime. He did not respond to requests for comment to expand on his claim.

“He entered the United States in 2023 under the Biden Administration as a B-2 tourist visitor and overstayed his visa,” the statement said, adding that Pulido “will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the United States.”

“Any request for asylum does not prevent immigration enforcement,” DHS said.

The agency proposed a rule last month that would deny asylum seekers work authorization while their applications are being processed, part of another major overhaul of the asylum system.

“For too long, a fraudulent asylum claim has been an easy path to work in the United States, overwhelming our immigration system with baseless claims,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement announcing the proposed rule. “Aliens are not allowed to work while we process their asylum applications. The Trump administration is strengthening screening of asylum seekers and restoring integrity to the asylum and work authorization processes.”

Caicedo Hincapié said he wanted to work with his lawyer to see if he could apply for a visa and finish his studies.

“It’s scary. I don’t really know how I’m supposed to hold myself together,” he said. “I just didn’t expect it to be like this.”

Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, echoed this sentiment.

“It’s a shock,” she said, “not only to that person or their family, but also to the community around them and the people who depend on them, who had no idea that something like this could ever happen.” »