The Trump administration has implemented a new rule affecting approximately 444,724 pending asylum cases.

According to the Washington Post, nearly one-third of the 1.4 million USCIS backlog will now be sent directly to Justice Department immigration judges without prior public input.

The rule allows judges to dismiss cases without hearings and could result in asylum seekers being removed from the country without an opportunity to present their claims.

Immigration attorney Ira Kurzban said the move is part of a strategy to "take legal people and make them illegal."

“At a 30,000-foot level it sure looks like a deportation machine,” he added.

The rule specifically targets asylum seekers who filed more than a year after arriving, relying on technical filing deadlines that judges can normally waive.

That detail matters because asylum cases already move through a system with limited legal support: immigration courts do not provide public defenders, leaving vulnerable applicants, including people fleeing persecution, to navigate U.S. procedures on their own.

The rule also comes as the administration ends Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians, placing both groups under simultaneous deportation threats and adding another layer of pressure to an already crowded immigration system.

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