CAPAC and CHC Stand Against DHS Attempt to End Affirmative Asylum Interviews

WASHINGTON, D.C. –The Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) and Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) led 40 Members of Congress in opposition to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) interim final rule, Affirmative Asylum Referrals Without Interview published in the Federal Register on July 28, 2026.

In the letter, led by CAPAC Chair Rep. Grace Meng (NY-06) and CHC Chair Rep. Adriano Espaillat (NY-13) and delivered Monday to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Asylum Chief Brett H. Lassen, lawmakers called on the agency to fully rescind the rule.

For more than three decades, everyone who applied for asylum with USCIS received a non-adversarial interview with an asylum officer. Under this rule, an asylum officer can now review the paperwork and send the case straight to immigration court without ever speaking to the applicant, including individuals with pending applications. DHS says the rule could reach up to 444,724 of the roughly 1.4 million pending applications.

Children who arrived alone are not exempt. A bipartisan Congress passed the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (TVPRA) in 2008 precisely so those children would be heard by a specially trained asylum officer, in a non-adversarial setting. This rule lets DHS skip that step.

In the letter, Members outlined how the interim final rule proposed by DHS goes against the will of Congress, is being enacted illegally by skipping the public comment process the law requires, and is arbitrary and capricious.

Members made clear that the asylum backlog is a real problem, but that this rule is not a lawful way to solve it.

“We welcome genuine efforts to address the affirmative asylum backlog. But DHS may not pursue efficiency at the expense of the statutory framework Congress built, the procedural safeguards the APA requires, or this country's decades-long commitment to providing refuge to those fleeing persecution. The Department has ample resources to address the backlog lawfully. The Administration should redirect resources away from expanding detention and removal operations and toward hiring and training the asylum officers necessary to give applicants of all ages a fair opportunity to present their claims, as Congress intended,” concluded the lawmakers.

You can read the full letter HERE.