On this episode, we’re talking about the history and evolution of United States’ refugee and asylum policy. We have been a country of exclusion for about as long as we’ve projected the image of a democratic refuge. We talk about what it actually takes to secure refugee or asylum status in the U.S. and how that gargantuan task has been made so much more difficult, if not impossible for some, under the second Trump Administration.
This episode features Dr. Georgianna Pisano-Goetz.
Transcript
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:00] On December 2nd of 2025, US Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a memorandum, the subject A Hold and Review of all pending asylum [00:00:10] applications in all USCIS benefit applications filed by aliens from high risk countries.
Archival: [00:00:17] There's a temporary halt for people coming in from [00:00:20] countries like Afghanistan. And in a cable obtained by the New York Times, the State Department has issued orders to the embassy.
Archival: [00:00:26] Asylum decisions are being halted. This means any asylum seekers attempting [00:00:30] to flee persecution in their country. They'll now be not be granted access into the U.S..
Archival: [00:00:35] He's also promising to expel millions of immigrants already here, revoking their legal status.
Archival: [00:00:39] Wednesday's [00:00:40] attack by an alleged Afghan national President Trump is calling for a stricter crackdown on U.S. immigration.
President Trump: [00:00:45] These are people that do nothing but complain. They complain. [00:00:50] And from where they came from, they got nothing.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:57] This is Civics 101. I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:59] I'm Nick [00:01:00] Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:01] And today, per usual, I am trying to figure out what is going on. So we're going to be talking about the history and evolution of United States refugee [00:01:10] and asylum policy. We have been a country of exclusion for about as long as we have projected the image of a democratic refuge. We'll talk about what it actually [00:01:20] takes to secure refugee or asylum status in the US, and how that gargantuan task has been made so much more difficult, if not impossible, for some [00:01:30] under the second Trump administration. Stay tuned. Today [00:01:50] on Civics 101, we are covering refugee and asylum policy in the United States, namely what those terms mean, what it takes to achieve that status, [00:02:00] and how far out of reach this has all become in the past year. And to get there, per usual, I spoke with someone who knows a lot more than I do.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:02:09] My name is Georgi [00:02:10] Pisano Goetz. I am a practicing immigration attorney down in Texas, and I'm also an adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:18] So if Georgie is a practicing [00:02:20] immigration lawyer, does that mean she actually works with asylum seekers?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:25] Yeah. But before we get to the speaking part, Nick, do you know what asylum [00:02:30] means?
Nick Capodice: [00:02:31] Generally, it is when something or someone keeps you safe from something else or [00:02:40] somewhere else.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:42] That's a start.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:02:42] So when students are coming, uh, registering for a class in asylum law, what they're learning about is the protection that the [00:02:50] US and other signatories to the Refugee Convention offer to individuals who are fleeing their home countries from persecution. So they're learning what protections are available to individuals [00:03:00] who have suffered an extreme level of harm in their home country, to the extent that they no longer feel safe remaining there.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:06] So those are the basics. Someone has experienced harm [00:03:10] where they are and they want out. And the United States has a process for that.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:03:15] Ostensibly, we actually derive it from something called non-refoulement, [00:03:20] which is a French word that I'm definitely butchering. Uh, but it means no return. And so it just means that it's a commitment that if an individual is fleeing a country where they're being harmed, [00:03:30] usually their country of origin, that the nations that are a party to this agreement refuse to return that individual to their home country. Asylum goes one [00:03:40] step further and gives them a path to citizenship and some other benefits within the country that they choose to resettle in.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:46] All right. And before we sink our teeth into what that actually looks like, [00:03:50] or I guess looked like will maybe look like again in the United States. Hannah, can we do the briefest of histories here? Because Georgie mentioned [00:04:00] the US signing a convention, which is in this case an international agreement. But from what I know about the immigration system in the United States, [00:04:10] we must have been a little late to the international part of the game.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:14] That we were. Nick, do you want to remind the people of your bona fides?
Nick Capodice: [00:04:17] I do, uh, so I worked at the [00:04:20] Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan for about nine years.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:23] I have been there only once, and it made my archive. Nancy Drew mystery obsessed heart sing. I cannot recommend it enough.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:29] Me [00:04:30] either. Highest recommendation possible. While I was working there, I learned a ton about immigration. And for the purposes of this episode, I learned how the United States has responded to [00:04:40] foreigners during and after global disaster. Which is which is over and over again. We walked back the whole tired, huddled [00:04:50] masses thing. During World War One, we created a literacy test. We banned anyone, quote, likely to become a public [00:05:00] charge, end quote, which is one of a long list of what the United States thinks makes for a good immigrant or a bad immigrant. And we created a quote unquote, barred [00:05:10] zone, which expanded on the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and banned people from almost all of Asia from immigrating to the United States. This [00:05:20] new act of 1917 was passed by Congress. Woodrow Wilson vetoed it, and Congress overrode his veto.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:28] Which is not to say that Wilson was an [00:05:30] open borders kind of guy.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:31] Oh absolutely not. Wilson was totally down with race based exclusion, and very wary of anyone who might just be an anarchist, [00:05:40] socialist or pacifist.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:05:42] Hello, Red scare number one.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:44] All right. And then, 1921, Warren G. Harding signed the Emergency Quota [00:05:50] Act, which was the first time that the United States had a formula for how many people from what nations would be allowed to emigrate to the United States. We call this now the [00:06:00] quota system, and this got even more restrictive in 1924 when America passed the big one, the Johnson-reed act. This act drastically [00:06:10] lowered the quota numbers, in effect stopping immigration from places like, for example, where my grandparents came from, from Italy, but also from Eastern Europe, other [00:06:20] parts of Asia, etc..
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:21] That was the same year that we created the Border Patrol, by the way.
Nick Capodice: [00:06:24] Yeah. Now getting us back to that refugee convention that Georgie mentioned, because [00:06:30] I know in 1948, after World War Two, we passed the Displaced Persons Act, which sounds like we are opening things up to refugees, but [00:06:40] was actually super restrictive, especially for Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:46] So much so that when Harry Truman signed it into law, he called it, quote, wholly inconsistent [00:06:50] with the American sense of justice, unquote. Because to your point, this act was specifically discriminatory against Jewish displaced persons, despite [00:07:00] the United States having been a key Allied force in World War Two. Key to the downfall of the Nazis, and to the liberation of many of those displaced peoples [00:07:10] from concentration camps. You can't go home. But you sure can't come here. So, Nick, what do you think the United States did when the United Nations [00:07:20] introduced the 1951 refugee conventions, defining the term refugee and laying out refugee rights and standards for international protection. [00:07:30]
Nick Capodice: [00:07:31] We said nope.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:32] We said nope. We did not sign it. We wanted to be in charge of our own policies, especially after World War two. Now, do [00:07:40] you happen to know when we finally did sign on to an international refugee agreement.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:45] That I do not?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:47] 1968, one year after [00:07:50] the UN came up with a revised refugee protocol. The old one was pretty much about European refugees following World War two. The new one took those restrictions away. [00:08:00]
Nick Capodice: [00:08:00] So this one was more broad and we agreed to it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:04] Well, Nick, it was the Cold War. We had already begun to change our approach to admit refugees fleeing communist [00:08:10] oppression in Europe and the Middle East. Then Hungary, then Cuba. Now, to be clear, we still had restrictions, but we were projecting an image. We wanted the United [00:08:20] States to be seen as the leader in the protection of democracy and human rights by agreeing to the 1967 UN protocol. According to then President Lyndon B Johnson, [00:08:30] we would be helping the whole world to accept and stick to those humane standards.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:37] And how does that all square with the Vietnam War?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:08:39] Well, yeah, [00:08:40] this is, in fact during the Vietnam War, but I would not so much try to square that despite the humane standards thing, the United States military [00:08:50] committed atrocious human rights violations in Vietnam. We were both a cause of the refugee crisis that followed the Vietnam War, and we created a path [00:09:00] for hundreds of thousands of those refugees to resettle in the United States. Contradictions abound here, Nick. Okay. Finally, in 1980, [00:09:10] Congress passed the Refugee Act. This is what gave us the law to abide by that international protocol and codified our refugee [00:09:20] policy.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:21] So smooth sailing after there, right?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:09:25] I'll get to that after the break. We're [00:09:40] back. We're talking about refugees and asylees today. Before the break, we crash course covered how we ended up with a refugee and [00:09:50] asylum process here in the United States that is also tied to an international approach to refugees and asylum. And before we get into the processes, there are two [00:10:00] things that you have to keep in mind. One, a lot of what we are about to discuss is currently, as of the publishing of this episode, [00:10:10] suspended. Two even if it weren't.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:10:14] It depends on where you bring your claim. It depends on the country you're coming from. It depends on what the current situation in the country is.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:19] Again, [00:10:20] this is Georgie Pizano, a practicing immigration attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Houston Law Center.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:10:26] It depends on who's in charge of DHS. It depends on the attorney in the [00:10:30] room with you. It depends on your client. So it would really depend.
Nick Capodice: [00:10:34] I'm just going to kind of tie all this together, Hannah and Hazard that this [00:10:40] whole refugee and asylum thing depends on factors.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:46] Sure does. And I should say right off the bat, I'm not going to be able to give you the precise [00:10:50] process for any one individual to become a refugee or an asylee because so much goes into the United States decision to grant someone refugee or asylum status, or I [00:11:00] should say in many cases, so much depended. But we will get into that in a bit. Before we can get to asylum, we first should go through the refugee [00:11:10] process.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:11:11] So if you're seeking asylum, you need to show that you meet the legal definition of a refugee, which we see as someone who's fleeing their country because [00:11:20] they have or will suffer harm, rising to the level of persecution on account of a protected ground and those protected grounds. Race, religion, nationality, membership [00:11:30] in a particular social group.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:31] All right. This we laid out before the break. Basically, you've got to be in some kind of specific, provable form of harm's way to [00:11:40] be considered a refugee.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:42] That's right. And even so, I mean, even if it is definitely true that if you were sent back to your country of origin, you will be in some kind [00:11:50] of danger. It is still really difficult to achieve refugee or asylum status in the United States. Remember how Georgie talked about [00:12:00] the principle of non-refoulement? Please forgive me, French speakers. It is the big part of international refugee and asylum law. The thing that prohibits countries from [00:12:10] forcibly returning someone to the place where they face danger or persecution. Well, people are really fouled. This is a complex and difficult [00:12:20] process, but there are processes. And Georgie talked about the two basic pathways.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:12:28] Outside of the US and inside the US. [00:12:30]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:32] If you're outside the US and want to come here as a refugee, or at least this is how it used to go, you could submit an application to the [00:12:40] United States Refugee Admissions Program. Before doing that, though, you generally need a referral.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:46] From whom?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:12:46] From the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees, or [00:12:50] from a United States embassy, or from some other non-governmental organization.
Nick Capodice: [00:12:55] So some higher power has to know about you and agree that you are, in [00:13:00] fact, a refugee before the United States will decide whether they agree that.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:07] And you almost always need to already have left your country of [00:13:10] origin unless the US president makes a special authorization.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:14] This already sounds both difficult and immensely complicated.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:19] None of [00:13:20] what we're going to talk about today is easy, but what I am describing is probably the easiest of what we are going to talk about. So let's say you get the referral. [00:13:30]
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:13:30] You apply abroad, you go through a vetting process and then you enter the US as a refugee.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:34] Already I'm going to assume that the vetting process is fairly involved.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:39] There is a pre-interview, [00:13:40] a prescreening biographic checks, biometric checks, another interview, a security check, medical exams, making sure you have an agency to sponsor you in the United States. And [00:13:50] then even after you have arrived in the United States, Customs and Border Protection makes the final call on letting you in as a refugee. But then once [00:14:00] you're in, you are a resettled refugee. You can legally work immediately, and you actually must apply for a permanent residency, aka green [00:14:10] card, one year after arriving in the US as a refugee.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:14] Hang on, you don't have to apply for asylum if you go through that process.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:18] Nope.
Nick Capodice: [00:14:19] But [00:14:20] I thought, George, you said you had to meet the legal definition of refugee in order to apply for asylum.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:26] Oh, and you do. And that is another process entirely. [00:14:30] So we just talked about applying for refugee status from outside of the US.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:14:35] Whereas if you are inside the United States or appearing at the border, you then apply [00:14:40] for asylum and you can apply to USCIS. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is considered an affirmative application. Or you can apply [00:14:50] defensively because you've already been placed in court proceedings and you're defending against deportation by saying that you need asylum because you have a fear of returning to your home country. This is a defensive [00:15:00] application.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:00] You can apply for asylum from inside the United States.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:04] Actually, you must be either inside the United States or at a port of entry, like [00:15:10] an airport or border crossing to do so.
Nick Capodice: [00:15:12] And let's say you're already in the country. Does it matter how you got there?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:15:20] There [00:15:20] are so many. It depends for that one, like the kind of visa you have, or maybe you never had a visa, or your visa is expired [00:15:30] and on and on. Very broadly speaking, if you are in removal proceedings, as in the government is trying to remove you [00:15:40] from this country, you are going to apply for asylum defensively, like in defense of removal, in defense of deportation. If you are [00:15:50] not in removal proceedings, you apply affirmatively. Generally, you have to do this within a year of arriving in the United States. That is something [00:16:00] called a statutory bar.
Nick Capodice: [00:16:02] I think I got it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:03] Well, you see, the thing about asylum and refugee law is that you might think you got it, but you could be wrong.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:16:09] Do you have to have a [00:16:10] lawyer? No. Technically, the process is not built to require a lawyer. Right. You should be able to request asylum in the country you're arriving in, and not need to pay someone thousands [00:16:20] of dollars to represent you in that process. However, is it easier with a lawyer? Absolutely.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:26] More so than any other episode. Nick. This one had me on a research [00:16:30] tear because I just kept thinking, well, what about this situation? Or this one or this one? There are so many factors. There are so many situations. If you [00:16:40] go to USCIS, gov, it is a bevy of you may do this, you must do this, have this form, do this. By this time. There are exceptions to this. This may not apply to you. Et cetera. Et cetera. Et cetera. [00:16:50] So yeah, you know, a lawyer helps, but there's a part of that process that ostensibly should not require a lawyer. [00:17:00]
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:17:00] Which is the affirmative application, which if we want to think of something as being better or worse or easier or harder, the affirmative application is going to be easier. It's not an adversarial process. [00:17:10] You truly do not need an attorney there because there's no prosecutor, you know, grilling you. There's it's not an adversarial process. You're not being tested, so to speak. [00:17:20] So you can apply you file the form, um, the form requires some biographical information from you. It asks you certain questions about harm you've experienced in the past, other countries [00:17:30] you've traveled through. If you've returned to the country, you're claiming harm from those types of things. You typically need to provide some evidence. However, your personal [00:17:40] credible testimony can be sufficient to prove your claim, but it is always helpful to provide evidence letters from people that witnessed the harm you experienced. Identification [00:17:50] certainly documents. If you're applying as a family to prove that you are a family that is related to each other. And then country conditions evidence.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:57] So that is the basic affirmative process. [00:18:00] You're in the country, you apply at the right time. You go through the system and you are either awarded asylum or you're not.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:06] And if you're not.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:08] Well, you're probably going to be referred [00:18:10] to immigration court and go through a defensive asylum process, which is also where many asylum seekers end up when they arrive at the border of the US. So [00:18:20] let's pivot to that. What does that defensive process look like? It's something like this. You show up at the border and you say you are afraid to return to your home. You fear [00:18:30] persecution. You fear perhaps torture. An agent is going to interview you.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:18:35] So there are a couple of different interview stages.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:18:37] There's one that you have to pass to [00:18:40] be placed into immigration proceedings. That usually is happening if you're arriving at the border. And that's the credible fear interview.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:46] Is credible fear different from proving that you're a refugee?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:18:52] It [00:18:50] is. It actually has a lower bar. That agent is just going to decide whether there is a significant possibility that [00:19:00] an asylum seeker might actually get asylum. From there, you're probably going to end up in immigration court, which means, okay, maybe you could get asylum, but [00:19:10] you are also now defending yourself from removal, hence the term defensive process.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:19:16] The similar sort of process at the courts is that you file your form. [00:19:20] You definitely need an attorney. You don't have to have one. But I would highly recommend having one because there is a prosecutor. You're filing the same sort of evidence, but maybe a little bit [00:19:30] more because you're anticipating the adversarial approach. You do not have an interview, have a hearing where you provide testimony and there's a direct examination, there's a cross-examination. [00:19:40] The attorney from the Department of Homeland Security is asking you about any inconsistencies in your case. The immigration judge is asking you about any inconsistencies in your case or [00:19:50] anything really they see fit to ask you about because asylum is discretionary. So those are the interviews. That's what you are required to do is provide [00:20:00] this form, provide some evidence to support your claims, and then speak on those claims.
Nick Capodice: [00:20:06] If you're defending yourself from removal, does that mean you're [00:20:10] being detained by the government at that point?
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:20:13] Within the courts.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:20:13] We have two processes. One is non detained. You're living at home. You go to your court proceedings, it proceeds, the other [00:20:20] is detained. You're in a detention center. You go to court via video conference and your proceedings move much faster because you're in a detained setting. Any number of other things also happen [00:20:30] in the detained setting. Like I said, sometimes it takes place over video conference. Your ability to communicate over video conference varies. Your access to counsel is much harder to get a hold of somebody from a detention center [00:20:40] for someone to visit you in a detention center, obviously, detention centers are in rural areas. They're in different states. It just really makes it very difficult. [00:20:50] You can ask to be released on bond, which functions similar to a criminal bond. You prove to the court that you're not a danger and you're not a flight risk. The court releases you. You are now in the [00:21:00] non detained proceedings.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:01] There have been a lot of changes to this whole process, Anna, and as you mentioned at the beginning of the episode, a lot of what you're talking [00:21:10] about is currently moot for a whole lot of people.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:21:13] What we are currently.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:21:14] Seeing over the past year is a movement towards detaining every single person [00:21:20] who is in court proceedings, rendering them ineligible for bond, whether or not they are truly ineligible for bond is a legal issue that is being taken up in the federal district court. [00:21:30]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:31] I'm going to get a little more into what is going on right now in just a bit, but I do just want to add that there are so many different things [00:21:40] that can go or were going into this process, and so much of them have to do with whether you know about them, like [00:21:50] finding a lawyer.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:21:51] If you're arriving at the border, you very rarely have an attorney. And there are a couple of different things that can happen. If you are placed in court proceedings, the judge should give you an opportunity [00:22:00] to find an attorney. However, what we're seeing is more and more constraints on that initial entry point. And so individuals are not necessarily [00:22:10] going to court proceedings. They don't necessarily understand their rights at any given point. And, you know, there are certainly individuals who are asylum seekers, who speak English, who have a certain level of education. [00:22:20] But there are also huge groups of individuals who do not have an education, do not speak English, do not speak a language that a border officer might speak like an indigenous language [00:22:30] from Guatemala comes up on the southern border quite a bit. Many indigenous languages, not just one. And so the idea that they then know what their rights are and know to [00:22:40] contact an attorney is slim to none. They're mostly, you know, fleeing from something very serious. And then, uh, anticipating that the country will provide a system [00:22:50] for them to enter into.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:22:51] Just one point of note here. Speaking English is not a requirement to be granted refugee status. And as you may know, before [00:23:00] March of 2025, the United States didn't even have English as an official language. But going back to the border, even crossing at the correct location is [00:23:10] more complicated than it may seem.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:23:12] It's very important in the United States that you arrive at a port of entry. So like an airport or also physically, there are bridges along [00:23:20] the southern border and probably the northern border as well, although I have not worked at the northern border. And so it is very important to your case process whether or not you entered with inspection or [00:23:30] without inspection. And that means you saw a Border Patrol agent, which you saw at the port of entry. However, if you've lived in another country and you've ever crossed a border, did [00:23:40] it look anything like the United States border? Was there any, you know, clear delineation? Was there a clear office that you had to go to? You know, a lot of people arrive and have no understanding [00:23:50] that they've quote unquote, entered without inspection because they just know that they need to cross the border. And once they cross the border, they will be eligible to apply for asylum.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:01] These [00:24:00] are things that I had not really considered, Hannah, that it's one thing to go through this complicated process. It's quite another to know anything at all [00:24:10] about this process.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:12] And as Georgie told me again and again, it is so totally dependent on your individual case. But [00:24:20] let's say you do actually get awarded asylum. An incredibly difficult thing to do.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:24:26] If you get asylum status, you're then an Asylee and an Asylee [00:24:30] can apply for their green card after one year. Um, and then after you have your green card for five years, you can apply for citizenship. So you get this path. And asylees typically have access to [00:24:40] some benefits. The government partners with non-profits to provide sort of resettlement assistance in the country. Um, however, we're seeing that really shrink, [00:24:50] because that has to do with a private public partnership between the government and the nonprofits. So we're seeing a lot of the resettlement agencies shrink. And so then no one's there to provide [00:25:00] the asylee benefits. However, they are technically entitled to them. And once you have Asylee status, you can be eligible for other forms of social benefits. And certainly once you get your green card, you're eligible for [00:25:10] benefits by benefits.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:11] I should just say Georgie means things like healthcare, social security, child care, benefits, supplemental nutrition assistance. There's also [00:25:20] work authorization, education benefits, travel flexibility like making it easier to enter or exit the United States, and protection from deportation if you follow US [00:25:30] law. I should also point out that green card holders from certain nations are now having their status reviewed, and we will get into that. But generally, why [00:25:40] is all of this so much further out of reach for so many people? Let's dig in after the break.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:05] We [00:26:00] are back here on Civics 101. We've been talking about refugee and asylum seekers vis [00:26:10] a vis the United States. And Hannah, just before the break, you said you were going to finally bring us up to speed on what's going on today in terms of asylum seekers and [00:26:20] refugees.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:21] I did here's Georgie Pizano again.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:26:23] This is certainly a shift away from protection on every front, right, making it harder. People cannot apply [00:26:30] from abroad, making it harder for people to apply at the border, making it harder for people to apply within the United States.
Nick Capodice: [00:26:36] So what is actually happening to people who are trying to [00:26:40] flee their home country and become a resettled refugee, or become an asylee in the United States?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:26:46] As far as those who apply abroad, the process we described [00:26:50] as incredibly difficult and yet easier than other processes.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:26:53] One of the first presidential proclamations, executive orders, was to end the US Refugee Admissions Program, which was [00:27:00] where you apply for asylum abroad and enters a refugee. So it's not surprising that if the administration is closing the valve abroad, that they're trying to close the valve domestically [00:27:10] as well.
Nick Capodice: [00:27:11] One of the first executive orders, meaning like a year ago.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:15] That's right. Trump first suspended refugee admissions full stop, then [00:27:20] announced the administration would be prioritizing white South Africans for refugee admission, who Trump says face racial persecution in their homeland. South Africa, by the way, denies [00:27:30] this. Trump also lowered the refugee ceiling in terms of how many people would be accepted every year, from 125,000 to 7500. [00:27:40]
Nick Capodice: [00:27:40] Wow. So very few refugees comparatively, and mostly white South Africans, correct?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:48] This also meant that many, though not all, [00:27:50] people who have spent years having their refugee applications processed have now been, at least for now, stranded without a process. The USCIS [00:28:00] has also announced that it will rereview previously reviewed cases of refugees admitted to the United States between January 2021 and February [00:28:10] 2025.
Nick Capodice: [00:28:12] As in people who already went through the whole process that you laid out earlier.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:28:16] Yeah, we're talking about the people who succeeded. People [00:28:20] who are in the United States legally, who went through the very detailed and very in-depth refugee vetting process, which can take up to three years by some estimations. [00:28:30] The memo announcing this new policy claimed that Biden era vetting was insufficient and led to national security concerns. Five days [00:28:40] after this memo was circulated, two National Guard soldiers were shot by an Afghan national who had come to the United States under a special Biden era resettlement program. [00:28:50] The shooting was then cited in the December policy memo that halted USCIS asylum applications and cited high risk countries, including Afghanistan. [00:29:00]
Archival: [00:29:01] For families who believed their future here was settled, certainty has now shifted to fear.
Archival: [00:29:07] I had a client just just asked the other day for a case that we just [00:29:10] filed. Like, does that mean that they're going to be out of status? Like, is that going to mean that they can be picked up? You know, there's all kinds of fears around that.
Nick Capodice: [00:29:18] Okay. What happened with the [00:29:20] asylum seeking process? Exactly.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:29:22] Okay. Us Citizenship and Immigration Services, aka USCIS. What I keep talking about has paused the decision making process for [00:29:30] all affirmative asylum applications, regardless of your country of origin. Trump has also issued a pause on all immigration applications, including asylum, from nearly [00:29:40] 40 different countries.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:29:42] Uscis had said that they will not process any applications for asylum or any form of benefit from those countries. You can still apply and the USCIS [00:29:50] cannot, as far as I know, cannot reject your application. They have to accept it if it's properly filed. However, they just won't do anything with it. Like you're not going to get [00:30:00] an interview. There's not going to be a process. That's. Yeah.
Nick Capodice: [00:30:02] And Hannah, you said affirmative applications have been paused. What about the defensive applications?
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:30:09] Any applications [00:30:10] before USCIS have been paused, however. What is going forward before the immigration courts has not been paused. So anybody applying for asylum before an immigration judge is still being processed. [00:30:20]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:30:20] At the southern border? Agents are also currently engaging in something that has been referred to as metering.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:30:26] Metering is just about controlling the access to territory. [00:30:30] So like I said, you're only eligible to apply for asylum in the United States when you have entered the United States. From a cynical point of view, it's a way to prevent people from entering the United States and barring [00:30:40] them from applying for asylum. From a less cynical point of view, it's a way to control the flow of people at the southern border that it's just too many. We don't have enough people [00:30:50] to process them and to hear their asylum claims and put them into the proper process. Uh, and so we need to control how many people cross the border at a certain point. Um, we saw it under Trump [00:31:00] 1.0, where at certain stretches of the southern border, they were saying turning people away. This is the turn back policy, which is sort of hand in hand with the metering turn back from the border and saying, you need [00:31:10] to come back a different day. We've filled our quota. And then it was sort of haphazard. They maybe had handwritten lists of who could come back, who had an appointment later. There were multiple days [00:31:20] that they didn't accept anyone who didn't have documents to cross into.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:31:25] Georgie explained that this is something that shifted a little bit during the Biden administration with the [00:31:30] CPB one app, something that migrants could use to schedule an appointment. That was unsurprisingly short lived.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:31:37] And now we're back to a little bit of metering. Well, I guess no [00:31:40] metering at all, because no one's being allowed to request asylum at the southern border under Trump 2.0.
Nick Capodice: [00:31:45] All right, Hannah, I also have to ask about arrests and detentions. There have been [00:31:50] so many cases of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, aka Ice, arresting people before or after their asylum hearings. What [00:32:00] is that?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:32:01] Yeah. So this is something that has prompted a lot of public outcry and resulted in people showing up both inside and outside of federal [00:32:10] immigration courthouses to show their support for non-citizens and to protest the presence of Ice agents. To be clear, Ice can arrest and detain asylum [00:32:20] seekers. The targets of these arrests and detentions are ostensibly people who Ice suspects are subject to removal from the United States for various [00:32:30] reasons. Now, some states, like New York, have laws that would generally require a warrant from a judge for an Ice agent to arrest an asylum seeker on their way [00:32:40] to, at or leaving court. Ice has also made, quote, collateral arrests of people suspected of violating immigration law, regardless of whether or not they are the initial [00:32:50] target. Ice also has limited ability to arrest and detain U.S. citizens if they are determined to be interfering with an arrest, assaulting an Ice agent, or [00:33:00] despite citizenship suspected of being in the United States illegally. This is ostensibly how Ice has arrested and detained US citizens, green card holders [00:33:10] and other people in the country legally. Ice agents have dragged, tackled, beaten, tased and shot American citizens recently, killing one Renee Nicole [00:33:20] Good in Minneapolis on January 7th, 2026. There have been hundreds of lawsuits filed against Ice for various reasons, including detention and deportation policies. [00:33:30] Now, in terms of what is going on with asylum seekers and their cases today, I can tell you that detention is more likely if your court case has ended [00:33:40] or been terminated.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:33:41] Certainly, we saw a couple months ago that people were showing up to court in DHS was moving to terminate their cases.
Nick Capodice: [00:33:48] So the Department of Homeland Security was [00:33:50] actually requesting that those cases be terminated.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:33:53] Right. You'd have DHS attorney move to dismiss the case. And Georgie told me that at least in [00:34:00] the past, this could actually be a good thing, a way to turn around and send an affirmative asylum application to USCIS.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:34:08] Sometimes termination can seem like [00:34:10] the best case scenario because you want to go through the affirmative process. However, several months ago, when DHS was terminating these cases, it was to place people in expedited removal. And I don't know [00:34:20] of any list. However, we did see that DHS had internal guidance that expedited removal would apply to anyone who had been in the US for less than two years, and so they were [00:34:30] targeting cases that had just started or were in preliminary proceedings. I should say two years is preliminary, right? Immigration court takes a long time unless you're in a detained [00:34:40] setting. So they were terminating the cases which the non-citizen and maybe their attorney, if they had one, was like, well, great. Like then we can pursue some other opportunities. But it was to put them in this expedited removal [00:34:50] and really limit their access to process, limit their access to an immigration judge.
Nick Capodice: [00:34:56] Expedited removal, meaning trying [00:35:00] to get them out of the country as soon as possible, right? Well, while we're on the subject, Hannah, I've heard of asylum seekers being sent to other countries. [00:35:10] Like, not the country they're fleeing from, but a third country. Is that real? Is that happening?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:17] It is. It is done through what is called [00:35:20] an asylum cooperative agreement. Us law does provide for these agreements, provided that an asylum seeker is safe in that third country and has access to a full and fair [00:35:30] asylum process. Now, for a long time, Canada was the only country with which we had such an agreement. We now, according to reports, have those agreements with nations [00:35:40] such as Uganda, Honduras and Ecuador.
Nick Capodice: [00:35:43] Which are, to my understanding, countries from which some people flee to seek asylum in the United States. [00:35:50]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:35:50] They are indeed. Now, in case you're wondering, there are plenty of lawsuits pertaining to so much of what we just talked about. There is so much that remains to be seen, [00:36:00] and there is so much that we did not talk about today, so many other kinds of immigrations of situations for refugees and asylees, so many new developments [00:36:10] all the time. But for now, I think the big takeaway here is that the path is narrow and getting [00:36:20] narrower.
Georgi Pisano-Goetz: [00:36:21] Everything is shrinking. We see that over the years since 1950 that the US moves towards protection or away from protection. [00:36:30] Right. And that's the way that the law shifts in the immigration space in the United States. This is certainly a shift away from protection on every front.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:36:51] That [00:36:50] does it for this episode. It was produced by me, Hannah McCarthy with Nick Capodice. Our producer is Marina Henke. Rebecca Lavoie is our executive producer. [00:37:00] Music in this episode comes from Epidemic Sound. If you are seeking more information on asylum, refugee or immigration services in the United States, you [00:37:10] can find some basic information at USCIS.gov. But of course, many of those processes are suspended or halted at the moment. There are also many, [00:37:20] many resources available on the websites of many, many law firms and services available in states around the country. Just do a quick search online with the state that you're in [00:37:30] and what exactly you need help understanding. Because there is a lot more than went into this episode. You can find a lot more Civics 101, including every episode we have ever made at our website, [00:37:40] Civics101podcast.org. Civics 101 is a production of NHPR, New Hampshire Public Radio.