The facts
A Washington Post analysis of immigration court records, published Sept. 24, found that immigration judges ordered more than 440,000 asylum seekers removed in Donald Trump's first 19 months back in office. That is more than the previous eight years combined. The judges work for the Justice Department.
The Post's own history of the pile: under Joe Biden the asylum backlog went from about 1 million cases to nearly 3 million. People crossed, claimed asylum, and waited. Trump's argument, for years, is that the wait is the prize. DHS put it in a statement this week: the system "was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card." A pending application is not a visa. If the visa expired, ICE can pick you up at an airport, at the asylum interview, or after a traffic stop.
The machinery changed with the math. Judges can now deny a claim without a full hearing when the facts are not disputed and the case does not meet the legal test. Guidelines made asylum harder for people fleeing domestic violence or gangs. Asylum officers were told to send cases straight into deportation. The State Department is working on revoking visas for up to 200,000 foreigners who applied for asylum or are otherwise seeking it. DHS general counsel James Percival wrote that most people from the Western Hemisphere are here for economic reasons and do not qualify. Former Denver immigration judge Brea Burgie, fired in June, said supervisors told judges not to hold evidentiary hearings in the vast majority of these cases.
The grant rate fell off a cliff. TRAC at Syracuse, cited by the Washington Examiner, found that judges denied 94 percent of asylum claims decided in June 2026, about 13,500 people. They approved 6 percent, 771 people. In June 2024 the denial rate was 50 percent. Completions topped 14,000 in June. More than 270 immigration judges were fired or resigned across fiscal 2025 and 2026. More than 600 are left.
The Post's lead example is Grace Calero of Ecuador. She told the paper she made about $3,000 a month at home, which put her among the country's top earners, and that consulting work for local politicians brought death threats. She flew in on a tourist visa in 2023. "I decided to go to the United States until things calmed down," she said. She applied for asylum in 2024. Her daughter joined the claim later. They settled in Kissimmee. Last month a crash in Polk County put them in a hospital. The sheriff ran their names. ICE said both had overstayed. They were cuffed. Calero says she followed the process. Days later she and her daughter boarded a flight back to Guayaquil rather than sit in detention. She says she still rarely leaves the house there.
Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy DHS secretary in Trump's first term, told the Post this round is less sloppy than the last one. Blas Nuñez-Neto, a Biden DHS official, called the current approach cruel and said Democrats still should not reopen the late-Biden border.
Our take
Four hundred and forty thousand removal orders is not a scandal. It is the backlog getting a court date.
Asylum is a claim that someone will persecute you for your race, religion, nationality, politics, or membership in a particular group. It is not a tourist visa you keep after the return flight looked inconvenient. Calero's version is that she was a top earner who came until Ecuador calmed down, then stayed and filed. The Post put her in the hospital gown and asked you to cry before it mentioned the visa. The crash is not the policy. The policy is that a pending application got treated, for four years, as permission.
Biden's people let the line grow from a million cases to three million and acted surprised when the next administration hired judges and told them to finish the files. June's scoreboard was 771 grants and about 13,500 nos. DHS called the old habit a get-out-of-deportation-free card. The card got declined. The Post wrote the obituary.
