The Asylum Adjudication Freeze and the New Security-Screening Era
U.S. asylum processing entered a major disruption after USCIS halted asylum decisions, citing intensified vetting and screening. Reuters reported that USCIS paused asylum decisions after leadership statements, with no clear timeline for resumption at the time of reporting.
Comment — Alona Shevtsova, immigration lawyer:
“When a system shifts from adjudication to ‘indefinite holds,’ the legal burden moves onto the applicant: more documentation, more patience, and more strategic case-building. The practical advice is to treat your file like it will be reviewed twice—because it might be.”
USCIS policy materials show that adjudication and “hold and review” approaches have been formally communicated via memoranda, reshaping how pending cases and certain benefit applications are handled.
In parallel, USCIS also issued late-2025 rulemaking and alerts expanding asylum-related bars tied to security/public-health grounds (effective end of December 2025), reinforcing a wider trend: national-security framing is increasingly central to immigration decision-making, and it influences processing times, evidence expectations, and litigation risk.
