ALLOWING OFFICERS TO DECIDE

Asylum officers within U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) already make final decisions on asylum applications filed from inside the country. This proposal would extend that authority to border arrivals. Under current law, border arrivals are screened by an asylum officer for credible fear; those who pass are referred to immigration court for a full hearing before an immigration judge. Under the proposal, the asylum officer would conduct the full process in accordance with existing standards to determine whether the applicant qualifies for asylum. The asylum officer’s decision would not be appealable to immigration court; denials would instead be subject to limited internal review by other asylum officers within USCIS. This approach was a central element of the 2024 bipartisan Senate Border Act and is part of the bipartisan Dignity Act now pending in the House.

The Case For

Supporters argue that asylum officers are better suited than immigration judges to make final asylum decisions. Asylum determinations turn largely on fact-finding about country conditions and individuals’ accounts of what they have experienced — work that is the asylum officer’s specialty, while immigration judges are generalists handling many types of cases. Supporters also argue that the non-adversarial setting of an asylum interview is not just more accessible but also more accurate. Survivors of persecution and trauma can give a fuller account of what happened to them when they are not subject to cross-examination by a government attorney.

Supporters argue that the change would substantially speed up the adjudication of asylum claims. The immigration court backlog reached roughly 3.75 million cases in 2025, of which about 2.4 million were asylum cases. Scaling asylum officer capacity is faster and cheaper than scaling immigration courts, which requires hiring judges, building courtrooms, and providing prosecutors.

The Case Against

As with the other compromise proposals, opposition comes from two directions — those who think the change goes too far and those who think it doesn’t go far enough.

Goes Too Far

Opponents who think the proposal goes too far argue that asylum decisions are life-or-death, and that removing immigration court review creates an unacceptable risk that refugees with valid claims will be denied asylum and deported to persecution or torture. They note that immigration judges grant asylum in a substantial share of cases that asylum officers had referred to court as not qualifying — evidence, they argue, that single-officer adjudication produces serious errors requiring a full judicial check. They also argue that immigrants in immigration court can develop a fuller record — with more time to gather evidence and far greater opportunity to obtain legal representation — than in the compressed asylum officer process. 
vs
 Doesn’t Go Far Enough

Opponents who think the proposal doesn’t go far enough argue that the asylum officer interview lacks an essential adversarial check: unlike at an immigration court hearing, no government attorney is in the room to cross-examine the applicant or test the applicant’s claim. These opponents argue this absence — combined with asylum officers’ substantially higher grant rates than immigration judges on comparable cases — would push approval rates up and weaken the system’s ability to deny invalid claims.Â