By now, you’ve probably heard that the Trump Administration is not a fan of immigrants. They have been making changes to detain and deport more non-citizens, more quickly, and with fewer due process protections. To that end, the Administration is pressuring Asylum Officers and Immigration Judges to adjudicate more cases. These civil servants are already stretched thin, and so the additional work is likely to reduce decision quality, as well as damage morale. It will also make litigating cases more difficult for asylum seekers and other non-citizens, as they will have less time to present their cases, and–most probably–less time to prepare.

Let’s start with the Asylum Office. In my local office (Virginia), Asylum Officers had been expected to complete four to six cases per week. That may not sound like a lot, but given all the required questions and bureaucratic nonsense involved in completing a case, plus training and other obligations, it was actually a fairly reasonable amount of work. 

Starting last month, however, the office began an “experiment” to see whether Asylum Officers (AOs) could complete eight cases per week, which is apparently the national standard. That’s two or three cases per day, plus a day or two to perform security background checks, write up decisions, and take care of other administrative tasks. Since interviews alone can easily take three or four (or eight) hours, completing so many cases per week is a tall order. 

The inevitable result of being forced to complete more cases is that the quality of decisions will go down, and mistakes will go up. Also, AOs will burn out more quickly. 

If the Administration cared about asylum seekers, fairness or federal employees, there are reforms that could improve efficiency at the Asylum Offices and protect due process of law. Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe the Administration will implement changes with an eye towards fairness. Instead, I’ll bet that AOs will be overworked and–since it is easier to deny than to grant–this will lead to more negative decisions.  

A similar story is playing out in Immigration Court, where management is directing that Immigration Judges (IJs) increase their output from two Individual Hearings per day to three. To do that, IJs are being ordered to allow only one hour for the non-citizen to present their case, 30 minutes for DHS (the prosecutor) to question the applicant, and another 30 minutes for both follow-up questions from the immigrant’s attorney and the IJ’s oral decision. In other words, in order to complete three cases in one day, each hearing would need to be completed start-to-finish in two hours. 

Again, there are common sense reforms that could be put into place to allow this to happen. Most helpful, in my opinion, would be to increase resources for DHS, so they could review cases in advance, contact the non-citizen’s lawyer, and narrow the issues to be discussed at trial. Also, most Master Calendar Hearings could be completed by a member of the court staff, rather than an IJ, which would free up additional time for judges to do substantive work. 

Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe the Trump Administration is interested in common sense reform. Instead, we can expect that shorter hearings will result in more unfair decisions, as asylum seekers and others will have insufficient time to present their cases. Indeed, in a typical court case, by the time we actually get started, swear-in the interpreter, review exhibits, and discuss how the case will proceed, we’ve already used up half an hour. And so the idea that the average contested case could be properly litigated in two hours seems impossible. 

Also, the two-hour directive bumps up against the law, which states that an “alien shall have a reasonable opportunity… to present evidence on the alien’s own behalf.” Perhaps this is an appealable issue, and so–if you have insufficient time to present your asylum claim–it would be important to make that clear to the IJ, so that you can appeal to the Board of Immigration Appeals or a federal court if need be.

A final worry about truncated court hearings is that the extra time will be used to reschedule and advance cases with insufficient notice (as occurred with ill effects during the Biden Administration). When this happens, it is much more difficult to prepare for a hearing or manage a busy schedule. The result is that non-citizens will be unable to present their strongest case to the IJ.