It’s getting more and more difficult to win an asylum case at the Asylum Office. So if your case is not approved, what happens?
For affirmative asylum cases, there are two possible negative outcomes at the Asylum Office level: Denial and Referral.
Denials occur only if you are “in status,” meaning you have some other type of non-immigrant status aside from the pending asylum case. Under the old system (that existed from December 2014 to January 2018), where cases were interviewed in the order received, very few applicants were “in status” by the time of their asylum decision. This is because the cases took years, and very few non-immigrant visas allow an alien to remain lawfully in the U.S. for that long (some exceptions might be the F, J, and H1b visas).
Now, under the new system of last-in, first-out (which is pretty much the same as the pre-December 2014 system), we can expect many newly-filed cases to receive decisions much more quickly, so more applicants will be “in status” when they receive a decision.
If the decision is “yes,” then you receive asylum with all the accompanying benefits. But if the decision is “no” and you are still “in status,” the Asylum Office will give you a letter, called a Notice of Intent to Deny or NOID. The NOID provides a fairly detailed explanation of why your case is being denied, and it gives you 16 days to file a response. In the response, you can include new evidence and explain why the Asylum Office should grant your case.
In the last few years, we have rarely seen NOIDs. However, before December 2014, we would see them now and again. Most often, we saw them when a new client came into the office seeking help with a response. The problem for a busy attorney is that the NOIDs give so little time to respond (16 days) and usually a few days had already passed before the person came for help.
My experience with NOIDs is that the Asylum Office pays attention to the responses. I’d guess that we were successful in getting asylum for about 50% of the people who came to us with such letters. The lesson here is that if you get a NOID, you should do your best to respond. In some cases, it may be impossible to get the Asylum Office to reverse its decision. But as they say, you’ve got to play to win, so if you get a NOID, make sure to respond–you may turn an “intent to deny” into a grant.
If you respond to the NOID and the Asylum Office still decides to deny your application (and assuming your status did not expire in the interim), you will receive a final denial. This means that your case is now over, and you can remain in the United States until your period of lawful stay ends. At that point, you are supposed to leave or seek some other status.
The problem for many asylum seekers, however, is that they do not want to return home (they are asylum seekers, after all). Even though the Asylum Office has denied their case, they want an opportunity to present the case to an Immigration Judge. This makes sense, as many cases denied at the Asylum Office are granted in court. As I’ll discuss in Part 2 (spoiler alert!), asylum cases denied by the Asylum Office are referred to Immigration Court if the applicant is out of status. But if you are denied and you are “in status,” what can you do?
If you received a final denial in your asylum case and you want to go to court, you have to re-apply for asylum at the Asylum Office. The procedure for a second application is different than for a first (check the I-589 instructions). Essentially, you submit a new application directly to the local asylum office, rather than file with a USCIS Service Center (initial asylum applications are sent to the Service Centers).
In theory, for a second application, the Asylum Office will only consider events that occurred after the first application. In other words, they typically will not revisit the first asylum application. Instead, you need to present something new if you want them to grant your case. It’s pretty rare that some new evidence arises between a first and second asylum application, and so the second application is likely to be denied. If the second application is denied, and you are now out of status, your case will be referred to an Immigration Judge, who will look at both your asylum cases.
Given this cumbersome system of having to file a second case, some applicants prefer to file for asylum when their status is expired or close to expiring (but keep in mind the one-year filing deadline). These applicants do not want to leave the U.S., and they prefer to go directly to court if their case is denied. This is certainly a reasonable plan. However, I do think it is important to consider the pros and cons of this approach.
On the plus side, if your denial arrives after your status has expired, you will go from the Asylum Office directly to court, so your case may move a bit faster. Also, of course, you get the chance to present your claim to an Immigration Judge. On the negative side, in order to make this happen, you have to wait until your status has expired (or is close to expiring) before you file your case. Some people may not like this delay. Also, you will not receive a NOID, and so you will only have a vague idea about the reason for the denial (when a case is referred to court, the Asylum Office does not give a detailed explanation of the reasons). Finally, you will not have an opportunity to rebut the Asylum Office’s reasons for denying your case, which means you lose an opportunity to win the case after the NOID is issued. For me, there is no correct answer here. The time frame of when you choose to apply depends on which path you prefer.
Of course, if you are out of status and receive a denial from the Asylum Office, your case will go to an Immigration Judge. But that is a topic for another day. Stay tuned….