Closing the Door to Humanitarian Immigration

"Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution." Article 14, Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)

Over the past year and a half, drastic changes in government policy have affected millions of immigrants living in the United States, as well as countless others who held hopes of entry. These developments have impacted not only those who aspired to study or work here, or secure greater opportunities for their families, but also refugees and asylum seekers—survivors of violence and persecution in their home countries, hoping to find safety here in the U.S.

On the first day of his current term in office, Donald Trump initiated what the New York Times has called “the harshest crackdown on immigrants inside the country since the 1950s.” Leading this operation is Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Stephen Miller, who has long maintained that immigrants threaten “American identity,” as well as safety and economic wellbeing. Under his mandate, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids swept through workplaces in cities and towns large and small, with officers urged to fulfill Department of Homeland Security (DHS) quotas of 3,000 arrests per day. The practice of “expedited removal” was expanded, empowering DHS to detain and to deport people before they have been able to present their case before an immigration judge. The administration rescinded directives of over a decade’s standing that identified schools, hospitals and health clinics, churches, and other places of worship as “protected areas,” enabling free rein to ICE enforcement at these sensitive sites. ICE officers have entered homes and arrested immigrants without having a judicial warrant—a practice seen by legal advocates as a violation of the 4th Amendment—and in some cases without any type of warrant at all. Despite declarations that arrests would focus on immigrants with criminal records and those who had entered the country illegally, this premise was rapidly flouted. Based on ICE’s own records, 70% of those who have been detained as of early April of this year have no criminal records. 

Profoundly impacted by these actions are forced migrants—individuals and families who have fled extreme violence in their countries of origin to seek refugee status or asylum here. Caught in the vise of ICE operations, they also face stark systemic barriers designed to close access to these forms of humanitarian immigration relief. One of the current administration’s first acts was to suspend the U.S. refugee resettlement program, closing the door to survivors of long-running, deadly conflicts in Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and those experiencing mass ethnic persecution, such as the Rohingya of Myanmar (Burma). Instead, a trickle of white South Africans has been welcomed as members of a so-called threatened group. Overall, refugee arrivals fell from 12,518 in December 2024 to only 1,341 in March 2026. 

Along with refugees, who are officially identified for resettlement to the U.S. prior to their arrival, the other major population seeking humanitarian immigration status are individuals who apply for asylum after arriving here. Survivors of persecution, torture, sexual and gender-based violence or other forms of extreme harm, they have the legally-enshrined right to establish before immigration authorities or an immigration judge a “well-founded fear” of return to their home country. Increasingly, however, the fact of having filed an application for asylum is no safeguard from arrest, detention, and possible deportation. As noted by Linda Rabben, author of Sanctuary and Asylum: A Social and Political History, “Immigration detainees are often treated worse than convicted criminals; many have not been charged with a crime, do not understand why they are detained and have no idea how long they will be held or what will happen to them after detention ends. Frequent transfers to facilities far from families or lawyers, lack of medical attention or treatment for chronic or serious conditions, isolation from fellow language speakers and physical or psychological abuse make detention a hellish experience, especially for traumatized survivors of torture, war, or civil conflict.” 

Across the country, detention centers have multiplied. Most are overcrowded, with inadequate facilities or health services, and rife with unsanitary conditions. Locations classified as “temporary holding facilities”—intended, according to ICE’s own standards, to hold people for a maximum of 12 hours—are instead holding immigrants for days or weeks.  One detention center in Texas accumulated 100 violations within its first eight months of operation; three people have died at the facility. More people died in immigration detention in 2025 than in any other year. 

Public outcry and legal response at various levels, especially since the killing of two U.S. citizens by ICE agents in Minnesota, have prompted a shift to less visible tactics intended to deter immigrants and block pathways for those seeking humanitarian status. These include “pretermission”—the denial or dismissal of an asylum application without a full evidentiary hearing or testimony by the applicant, and drastic reduction of the period within which most immigration cases can be appealed. Additional strategies include removal of immigrants to third countries, where they may not even speak the language, and incentivized “voluntary self-deportation,” which the New York Times has described “the growing shadow zone of our immigration system in which threats and intimidation operate where the law will not or cannot go.” Further, in what has been termed a strategy of “de-documentation,” the Trump administration has methodically sought to strip legal status from approximately half a million immigrants who entered the U.S. legally and were approved for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) or humanitarian parole. 

The unprecedented actions of the past year and a half have engendered profound fear among forced migrant survivors. Many are apprehensive of taking their children to school, going to health appointments, or attending mandatory ICE check-ins. Immigrant parents, faced with the possibility of being detained and potentially deported, are hearing difficult but crucial legal advisement to establish a plan for alternative guardianship of their children. 

The administration has also been dismantling fundamental systems for processing immigration cases, dismissing more than one hundred immigration judges across the country and advertising for so-called “deportation judges.” In a recent interview with PBS NewsHour, one of the ousted judges described the administration’s attempts to block any routes to asylum, including detaining—without bond and for extensive periods—people who had legally entered the country and applied for asylum. In one instance, a woman with a credible asylum case had come before him in court after being held in detention for eight months; due to what she’d experienced there, she stated that she no longer wished to seek asylum in the U.S., and would instead return to her home country. 

Further, tens of thousands of immigrants who are released from detention remain under constant surveillance by means of ankle monitors—electronic shackles that for some can evoke experiences of imprisonment and persecution in their home countries, with documented detrimental psychological as well as physical effects. 

The hard-line actions of the administration have left countless survivors of severe pre-migration harm uncertain of the future, newly vulnerable in the country they had envisioned as a place of safety. At the same time, lawmakers, advocates and activists are pushing back with legal challenges aimed at protecting civil rights and ensuring due process, and myriad voices continue to rise in protest against inhumane treatment of immigrants in detention.

Lauren Goodsmith, Associate Peace Corps Volunteer, Mauritania (1989-90), lives in Maryland. She has worked with asylum seekers and refugees for the past twenty years.