Biden Administration Considers Overhaul Of Asylum System At Southern Border
NPRBiden Administration Considers Overhaul Of Asylum System At Southern Border Enlarge this image toggle caption Drew Angerer/Getty Images Drew Angerer/Getty Images President Biden's top advisers promise "long-needed systemic reforms" to address a backlog of more than 1 million asylum cases in the immigration court system, which often keeps people applying for asylum waiting years to resolve their cases. The plan the Biden administration is considering to speed up the process would take some asylum cases from the southern border out of the hands of the overloaded immigration courts under the Department of Justice. Instead, it would handle them under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, where asylum officers already process tens of thousands of cases a year, two people familiar with the discussions who were not authorized to speak about administration plans told NPR exclusively. She says the administration could dramatically reduce the caseload by making a regulatory change to allow cases along the border to be handled by asylum officers in the Department of Homeland Security instead of the immigration courts.