Trump plans to end some asylum claims: Who would be affected?

The Trump administration’s crackdown on the immigrant community continues despite the protests against mass deportations. Now, a CNN report indicates that the government plans to take new actions that will affect asylum seekers, who could face rapid deportation without the right to a hearing.

The plan would be part of a series of actions taken by the government to prevent migrants from having legal protections. The efforts are a response to pressure to meet the immigrant arrest numbers Trump promised during his campaign.

Meanwhile, Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” currently being debated in the Senate, shows what the future of his immigration policy would look like and how the budget would be used to improve the capabilities of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to arrest and deport undocumented immigrants.

Speeding up the deportation process

According to the U.S. network, the Trump administration plans to deny asylum requests for hundreds of thousands of migrants. Those affected would be people who entered the country illegally and then applied for asylum. The cases of these individuals will be closed, leaving them at risk of being expeditiously removed, a formula that allows authorities to remove them from the country without the right to a hearing before an immigration judge.

A 2023 federal report indicates that around 250,000 people who applied for asylum with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) admitted to having entered the United States illegally. According to the data, there are currently around 1.4 million asylum applications pending.

Generally, if USCIS determines that a person is not eligible for asylum in the United States, they can hand the person over to ICE and proceed with their deportation. The same can happen with Customs and Border Protection (CBP). However, a report obtained by CNN states that USCIS will now have the authority to place those individuals in a faster deportation process and “take additional actions to enforce civil and criminal violations of immigration laws.”

Budget and the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’

A few weeks ago, Trump announced his legislation dubbed the “big, beautiful bill,” which would allocate $150 billion over four years to fund his mass deportation program. The Senate is currently debating a similar version, and Republicans want it passed quickly, especially after the widespread protests in Los Angeles against immigration raids.

The version of the bill that was passed in the House of Representatives would allocate more than $46 billion for the construction and infrastructure of the border wall with Mexico, a project that Trump has promoted since his first administration. Another $45 billion would be used to increase ICE’s detention capacity; $14.4 billion would go toward deportations, including transportation costs; and $12 billion would be allocated to reimburse states for enforcing immigration laws beginning in 2021.

Similarly, $8 billion would be allocated to hire 10,000 ICE agents, $3 billion for housing and supervision of unaccompanied migrant children, $1.32 billion for lawyers in immigration courts, and $1.25 billion to hire immigration judges and expand court capacity.

Critics argue that the bill lacks transparency and uses ambiguous language around key spending provisions. Human rights advocates warn that the law could result in an uncontrolled expansion of immigration enforcement without clear oversight, putting the rights of hundreds of thousands of migrants at risk.

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