The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Justice are set to launch a new expedited docket on Friday for single adult migrants who arrive at ports of entry and turn themselves in to border authorities. This new system aims to speed up the processing of asylum claims, administration officials said Thursday.
Under the new “recent arrivals docket,” single adult migrants will have their asylum cases processed first, rather than having their cases go to the back of the line, which can take years. The goal is to decide asylum cases within 180 days, or six months, significantly faster than the current average processing time of 1,016 days, or about 2.8 years, for fiscal year 2023, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.
“Today, we are instituting with the Department of Justice a process to accelerate asylum proceedings so that individuals who do not qualify for relief can be removed more quickly and those who do qualify can achieve protection sooner,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
Single adult migrants placed in the recent arrivals docket will have their cases processed before immigration judges in five cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York. Ten immigration judges will be dedicated to the docket initially.
The changes come as the Biden administration faces continued criticism from GOP lawmakers and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, regarding its immigration policies amidst the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years.
The recent arrivals docket builds upon a similar process announced by the DOJ and DHS in 2021, which applied to migrant families that arrived between ports of entry at the Southwest border. The administration also recently proposed a rule that would allow immigration officials to reject and quickly remove asylum seekers with criminal records that pose a threat to national security or public safety.
