An appeals court on Friday struck down the Trump administration’s closing of United States borders to asylum-seekers. 

An executive order by President Donald Trump on Inauguration Day last year, and later guidance to turn asylum-seekers around without a court hearing, are “unlawful” and “cast aside federal laws affording individuals the right to apply and be considered for asylum,” according to the ruling by a panel of the District of Columbia U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Advocates sued and said the administration’s action violated the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and the right to seek asylum based on fears of persecution.

Trump’s proclamation on Jan. 20, 2025, said “the sheer number of aliens entering the United States has overwhelmed the system and rendered many of the INA’s provisions ineffective,” and that  “an invasion is ongoing at the southern border, which requires the Federal Government to take measures to fulfill its obligation to the States.”

The executive order, along with later guidance, required anyone crossing the border without permission to be turned around or quickly deported without a court date. As of March, about 2.7 million people had been released at the border with immigration court cases in recent years, according to a Stateline analysis. 

Those numbers peaked at more than 100,000 a month at times in 2023 during the Biden administration, and dropped quickly to a few hundred a month after Trump’s 2025 order. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, speaking on Fox News, blamed the ruling on politics and called it “unsurprising.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the Department of Justice would seek further review of the decision. “We are sure we will be vindicated,” she wrote in an emailed statement to The Associated Press.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Amal Khalifa “felt human” for the first time after she fled Egypt in 2019 for the United States and found kind treatment from police when she reported being a victim of domestic violence.

“When I walked into that precinct I felt like a human being for the first time in my whole life,” Khalifa said. “I like the system here — it is there to help the people.”

Khalifa still faced a long road to asylum, which she gained last year, based on her fear of returning home to Egypt. As a government worker there she faced persecution for reporting corrupt activity by criminals and illegal pressure from the outlawed but powerful Muslim Brotherhood, she said.

But leaving her former fiancé after she got to the United States meant she had to support herself as her asylum case proceeded, and she was able to do that by working as an auditor for the New York State Department of Labor. She credits her ability to earn a living with legal work permission she could get after establishing her case.

That option to work could close soon for asylum-seekers for the foreseeable future.

Currently asylum-seekers must wait six months after filing an asylum request before they can work legally, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend that to one year. The new rule is open for comment until Friday. No effective date has been announced.

The proposal would also pause any new requests for work permission during times of high asylum case processing backlogs. Since the backlog is now 1.4 million asylum cases, that would effectively stop new and renewal work request applications for anywhere from 14 to 173 years, the administration estimates.

The rule would “make it impossible for asylum-seekers to work legally to support themselves,” and would result in more poverty and off-the-books workers competing with legal workers for jobs, according to a February statement from The Forum, a coalition of immigration-related advocacy groups.

At least half a million asylum cases would be affected immediately, if the rule takes effect, causing wage loss of $27 billion to $127 billion a year, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security estimated.

Not only new requests are affected — renewals will have to go through the same process and, if they’re even granted, would be shorter based on a rule change from December 2025. That new rule limits employment authorization and renewals to 18 months instead of the previous limit of five years.

“This makes it harder for people to gain work authorization and also more arduous to stay work-authorized,” said Colleen Putzel-Kavanaugh, an associate policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank that researches immigration policy.

The rule is meant to discourage “frivolous” asylum cases and “allow our asylum system to prioritize those actually seeking refuge from danger,” according to a February statement from the federal Department of Homeland Security.

“For too long, a fraudulent asylum claim has been an easy path to working in the United States, overwhelming our immigration system with meritless applications,” the statement said.

Amy Grenier, associate director for government affairs for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a trade group, said there are less drastic ways to curb frivolous asylum claims. For instance, the Migration Policy Institute has proposed new policies such as posting asylum officers at borders who are trained to make quick decisions on cases before the applications clog immigration courts.

“This rule seems designed to make it impossible for people to apply for asylum in the first place — a right which is protected under our laws,” Grenier said. “The administration will cause hardship for American businesses that rely on these legal workers, worsen asylum backlogs and harm people already fleeing for their lives.”

The move is likely to exacerbate the number of immigrants not authorized to work, especially the millions who arrived earlier this decade and sought asylum.

A Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis found that nearly 550,000 immigrants without legal status left the United States last year, including through deportations and voluntary departure. That has put a lid on job growth but has also kept unemployment stable, the report concluded.

Two groups that recruit asylum-seekers for jobs told Stateline they’re opposed to the proposed new rules. Many industries need immigrants such as Khalifa with valid asylum cases and professional experience in their home countries.

“Immigration is a vital part of the solution to labor shortages, especially in health care,” said Avigail Ziv, chief program officer at Upwardly Global, an organization that helps work-authorized immigrants, refugees and asylees restart their careers in the U.S. The group helped Khalifa find her state job in New York.

“In the U.S. right now there’s over 270,000 underemployed immigrants that have been trained in health care in their home countries,” Ziv said.

Another group that helps asylum-seekers find jobs is Tent Partnership for Refugees, whose CEO Gideon Maltz said, “When the U.S. government curtails employment authorization for those who are already here and working, they’re not only hurting people seeking refuge, they’re undercutting the companies and communities that depend on their labor.”

Employers in manufacturing, hospitality and logistics need more workers, Maltz said, and “refugees and asylum-seekers have been helping keep those industries running, reliably stepping into the hardest-to-fill jobs and contributing from Day One.”

Many asylum-seekers waiting for work authorization work in low-paying gig economy jobs such as food delivery, said Ernesto Castañeda, director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, which interviewed hundreds of asylum-seekers in New York City and the Washington, D.C., area for a research project.

The New York State Labor Department, in an attempt to clear clogged migrant shelters, set up a program in 2023 to connect asylum-seekers with valid work permission to jobs. Employers who participated included those in the industries of home health care, food processing, parking and building services, according to information the department sent to Stateline at the time.

The proposed federal rule suggests that American workers could benefit from the changes, and that employers would benefit by hiring available Americans. States could benefit as well, the department said, if lower immigration numbers reduce the strain on social services.

There were similar attempts by the first Trump administration to curtail work permission for asylum seekers, but they were all struck down in court, sometimes on technicalities.

A one-year waiting rule, as well as longer permitted processing times, were struck down in 2022 after a judge ruled that an acting Department of Homeland Security secretary did not have the authority to implement the rules in 2020. A 2018 court ruling also forced fast 30-day processing of work permission requests for asylum-seekers.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify Upwardly Global’s role in helping asylum-seekers get jobs. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Some of the Trump administration’s controversial new warehouse immigration detention centers are getting scaled back and postponed as states and cities fight back and new Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin reviews actions taken by his ousted predecessor, Kristi Noem.

Some states and cities have seen more communication and compromise as Mullin takes over and the Department of Homeland Security faces a continued funding shutdown that has reached 60 days.

That includes discussions about a proposed Arizona detention center where DHS agreed to scale back the number of prisoners by two-thirds and pay a city for lost taxes, and a proposed center in Maryland with a similar offer from the department. A lawsuit also is holding up work on that detention center. And in Georgia, a small city cut off the water supply to a proposed immigrant holding site.

A plan to house up to 1,500 immigrants in Surprise, Arizona, starting as soon as May was scaled back to 542 detainees starting in October at the earliest, and DHS agreed to pay the city $300,000 a year for lost property taxes. The department also may offer more to help with any police costs, after negotiations with DHS under Mullin.

“With the new leadership there’s been a lot of communication,” Surprise Mayor Kevin Sartor told a local radio show April 15, a contrast to the “very frustrating” experience of how the city learned from news reports in January that DHS had purchased a 418,000-square-foot distribution center for $70 million.   

“We do have a different leadership style,” Mullin said in a CNBC interview April 16, comparing himself to Noem. “We want to make sure people understand that we’re here working for the people, not against you.” 

In Maryland, the new DHS administration has also offered a scale-back from 1,500 detainees to 542, in a Williamsport warehouse bought for $102 million in January. An April 15 court order keeps most work on the center paused as the state continues a lawsuit claiming “impacts on the environmental, economic, and public health and safety interests of the state.”

In Arizona, dozens of Democratic state lawmakers sent a letter in April asking the city of Surprise to “stop the facility from opening at all costs,” but Mayor Sartor has said he doesn’t see a legal basis for a lawsuit. The mayor’s office is nonpartisan, but Republicans predominate among registered voters in the city by almost 2-1 over Democrats. 

Communities across the country are facing the results of a massive detention expansion fueled in large part by the record $45 billion approved for increased immigration detention by Congress last summer.

U.S. Reps. Maxwell Frost & Darren Soto tell Kristi Noem not to open ICE facility in Central Florida

Other state and local action on the plan to repurpose warehouses for detention centers include a Kansas City, Missouri, ban on nonmunicipal detention facilities passed in January, Developers halted the sale of a south Kansas City warehouse in February.

Owners of an Indiana warehouse sent a letter saying they weren’t in active negotiations with for the site, which had been reported as a potential detention center and drew local opposition from the town of Merrillville. Democratic lawmakers in Florida opposed plans for a warehouse detention center near Orlando in February, while some Republican lawmakers supported it. 

In Georgia, the city of Social Circle cut off water and sewer service for a $128.6 million warehouse proposed to hold 10,000 detainees, saying the town of 5,000 people did not have the capacity to serve it.

“The city’s infrastructure cannot accommodate this level of demand,” according to a February statement from the city, despite a “certainly creative” solution suggested by DHS to fill a water-supply cistern at times of low demand.  

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

The millions of migrants who were released into the country during the immigration surge that began in 2021 and peaked in 2023 caused a political firestorm when Republican states transported them to Democratic cities. Now, according to a new analysis, many of them are back working in the states that expelled them.

Many of the migrants turned themselves in to immigration officials when they entered the United States illegally, but avoided immediate removal by claiming a “credible fear” of persecution or torture if they returned home, giving them the right to seek asylum. It can take years to receive an asylum hearing. Others seeking asylum arrived with appointments made through a government app or relied on temporary parole programs while pursuing legal status in court.

Now, amid the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, these migrants are under increasing pressure, threatened with arrest and detention even when they appear for their court dates. Currently, they can begin to work legally after waiting six months, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend the waiting period to one year.

A Stateline analysis of court records shows that the largest numbers of recent asylum-seekers are in New York, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Utah, all of which have populations that are at least 1% higher than they were in 2020 because of the new migrants. Also in the top 10: Texas, Connecticut, California, Illinois and Colorado. Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas led the charge to transport migrants out of state. Stateline’s analysis counts only those migrants who are not being detained.

The country that is the single largest source of recent asylum-seeking migrants is Venezuela, with 363,000 as of February. The next largest is Mexico (251,000), followed by Guatemala (241,000), Honduras (240,000) and Colombia (235,000). But those nationwide numbers are scrambled in individual states: Ecuadorians predominate in five states, Nicaraguans in four, and Brazilians and Cubans in three each.

The influx of migrants that began escalating when President Joe Biden loosened immigration rules in January 2021 generated a political backlash that intensified after DeSantis and Abbott began busing and flying border migrants to Democratic-led cities, putting a significant strain on their finances. New York City, for example, spent a total of $8.13 billion on shelter and services for the more than 223,000 asylum-seekers and other migrants who arrived between the spring of 2022 and the fall of 2024.

Meanwhile, some established immigrant communities resented what they saw as lenient treatment of the newcomers.

Local news accounts reported anger over competition for jobs in Latino communities in New York City. But Ernesto Castañeda, director of American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, said interviews there showed more resentment over the aid that was offered to the new arrivals.

“For the first time in U.S. history, there were many big programs to temporarily house and feed the newcomers,” Castañeda said. “People (in New York City) talked about the food cards they got, or the free meals, or the hotel rooms, and that took a lot of the media attention locally.”

But many of the new immigrants also have provided much-needed labor, from the streets of New York City and its suburbs to the dairy farms of Idaho.

“All we can do is just work and hope for the best,” said a woman from Ecuador, who asked to be identified only as Rosa. Rosa works in a family food service business in suburban Spring Valley, New York, one of the top five areas in the country for the sheer number of the migrants, with most coming from Ecuador, according to court records.

“It’s hard here but in Ecuador it’s worse — there are gangs blackmailing you,” said another woman who works in a Queens store labeling packets of Ecuadorian herbs. She declined to identify herself.

In suburbs as well as cities, the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda has immigrants worried. About 22% of the newcomers around the country, in and out of detention, have orders of removal from immigration courts, meaning they could be arrested and summarily deported at any time.

“There were a lot of arrests right around here. People who did everything right got detained,” Rosa said in Spanish, glancing around nervously as she worked making traditional Ecuadorian dishes like corviches, fish fritters, and a fish and onion soup called encebollado.

Many of the new arrivals have stopped socializing and stay home when they’re not working, afraid to be caught up in raids that have swept thousands of them up into detention, according to interviews conducted in New York and the District of Columbia by the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies.

Even when much-hated Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro was arrested in January and removed to the United States for trial, many Venezuelan asylum-seekers stayed home rather than risk being arrested at public celebrations.

Ecuadorians got less media attention than Venezuelans because they came to a more established community in New York, Castañeda said.

“(Ecuadorians) already had networks, so they were not staying in shelters. They were not in the streets,” he said. “They could work and they were becoming part of the fabric of New York, but now they’re being deported by Trump because ICE knows who they are, where they live and their status is very easy pickings. They’re low-hanging fruit.”

Many Venezuelans would like to go home but face even more chaos after the fall of Maduro, said Héctor Arguinzones, organizer of a Venezuelan immigrant group in New York City.

“Many of us fled Venezuela because our own neighbors were our persecutors,” said Arguinzones. “We’re not trying to, you know, sneak into the United States. A lot of us want to go back. We are full of hope. But we cannot think that this crisis in Venezuela will be solved in three months. We must be patient. What we really need is humanitarian treatment.”

Texas has ended up with the largest number of Venezuelans, an irony noted in a book written by the American University research team. After initially receiving aid in more sympathetic areas such as Colorado, New York City and Washington, D.C., many of the Venezuelans traveled around the country looking for work, but trickled back to Texas where jobs were available and the cost of living was lower.

Living in the U.S. with an immigration court date is a tenuous existence for people fleeing gangs and political oppression in South America and Central America. Fear of returning to a home country can be a valid legal reason to avoid deportation, but it requires legal help and doesn’t prevent detention and pressure to “self-deport.”

“Unfortunately, having an asylum case is not a legal status,” Arguinzones said. “We tell people to keep up with their court cases and keep the paperwork with them, so at least they have something to show. At least it’s something.”

Robin Nice, a Boston attorney, said six of her clients with pending asylum cases were detained in a January sweep called Operation Catch of the Day, and only one had had a brush with the law in the form of a year-old traffic case.

“They were typically on their way to or from work, sometimes just getting into their car after finishing a shift,” Nice said.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in an unattributed statement to Stateline, said: “A pending asylum case does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States. If a person enters our country illegally, they are subject to detention or deportation.”

Some of the asylum-seekers pursuing legal status through the courts have already been detained, but they make up a small fraction of the 2.8 million total cases.

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

Small counties in the coastal Southeast had some of the largest population gains between mid-2024 and mid-2025 in estimates being released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau, mostly because of people moving from larger areas.

Jasper County, South Carolina, where there’s a building boom taking advantage of the popularity of nearby Hilton Head, was the fastest-growing county in the nation percentagewise, growing 6% in the year to 38,533 people. It grew even faster the previous year, 6.9%, but another county elsewhere grew slightly faster that year — Mellette County in South Dakota. 

Jasper County has seen movers from New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and other states, with some new building aimed at retirees and some for workers at expanding factories like TICO, which makes trucks designed for nearby ports, said Eric Larson, the county’s director of development services. One new housing development, Latitude Margaritaville in Hardeeville, is for people 55 and older.

“It’s a real magnet. They’re coming from all over the place and I think they come for the recreation, the low cost of living,” said Larson. “We’re excited to be that hot spot, but it has its challenges. 

“We’re rising to the occasion,” he added, noting that the growth requires more transportation, water and sewer capacity.  

All the 12 counties that grew 4% or more between 2024 and 2025 benefited predominantly from people moving in from other counties. Brunswick County, North Carolina, at the state’s southeastern tip below Wilmington, would have lost population instead of gaining almost 5% if it weren’t for new residents moving in. The influx erased the effects of more deaths than births during the year. 

Most of those fastest-growing counties are at the outer edges of popular metro areas in the Southeast, including Kaufman County, Texas, near Dallas; Jackson County, Georgia, near Athens; and Elbert County, Colorado, near Denver and Colorado Springs. 

However, four of the seven counties with the largest numeric increases had population growth that was largely driven by immigration — including Harris County, Texas, with the highest numeric growth in the nation at 48,695 in one year. Harris County includes Houston.

The other counties with the largest increases driven primarily by immigration include Maricopa County, Arizona (which includes Phoenix, up 35,411); King County, Washington (including Seattle, up 26,980); and Mecklenburg County, North Carolina (Charlotte, up 26,554).

Three other counties in the top seven had increases mostly based on people moving in from elsewhere in the United States: Collin County, Texas (north of Dallas, up 42,966); Montgomery County, Texas (north of Houston, up 30,011); and Wake County, North Carolina (including Raleigh, up 27,760).

Even in counties where immigration was the key driver of population growth, immigration was down from previous years, when immigration streams were swelled by millions of asylum-seekers paroled from the border with Mexico. That flow has largely stopped as the Trump administration stopped accepting asylum-seekers into the country starting last year.

Despite overall population growth, several counties saw a net immigration drop from the previous year. Net immigration dropped 41% in Harris County, Texas, and it was down 48% in  Maricopa County, Arizona. It was down 29% in King County, Washington, and down 41% In Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. No counties of any size saw increased immigration compared with the previous year.

Most counties that grew between 2023 and 2024 saw growth diminish or even turn to a loss between 2024 and 2025, the Census Bureau said in a statement, especially large counties that would normally receive lots of new immigrants.

The largest numeric declines were in Los Angeles County, California, which dropped by 53,934 after gaining 16,300 the previous year; Pinellas County, Florida, which dropped by 11,834, accelerating a smaller decline of 5,346 the previous year and gains earlier in the decade; and Florida’s Miami-Dade County, which lost 10,115 residents after gaining 18,633 the previous year. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.