Category: Nation & World

The Trump administration launched a plan Tuesday to channel hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers directly into deportation proceedings, a change that some attorneys said could lead to people being removed from the United States without a hearing.

Trump officials introduced a rule designed to reduce the 1.4 million asylum cases pending in U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Homeland Security agency that processes immigration applications, by nearly a third. The rule took effect immediately, before the public could weigh in.

In the past, asylum seekers who entered the U.S. legally or were never charged with an immigration violation had the opportunity to apply for refuge in an office before a trained asylum officer. The officer could refer them to immigration court for removal proceedings if they were rejected, or allow them to continue proceedings and potentially get on a path to obtaining U.S. citizenship.

Under the new rule, officials say as many as 444,724 cases could be transferred directly to one of the Justice Department’s immigration judges. Trump officials have empowered judges to dismiss certain cases without a hearing, so attorneys say it is possible that many asylum seekers will be deported without a chance to be heard.

Trump officials said in a statement that the rule is necessary because the asylum system is facing a “crisis.”

“For far too long the asylum system has been exploited for purposes of delay and work authorization, not legitimate claims of protection,” USCIS Director Joseph B. Edlow said in a statement. “America’s asylum system exists to protect individuals who genuinely fear persecution and this rule will help ensure that resources are directed to the timely adjudication of those claims instead of to those seeking to use the system as a loophole.”

The measure is the latest means through which the Trump administration has sought to transform the asylum system. President Donald Trump, in one of his first acts in office, barred asylum seekers’ entry into the United States by declaring an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

He has also targeted those who are already living inside the U.S., including hundreds of thousands of people who probably arrived legally and followed the rules to apply for asylum.

Trump officials are preparing to terminate work permits for Haitians and Syrians in the coming days after the Supreme Court enabled officials to allow their temporary protected status to expire. If those immigrants also applied for asylum and their cases are referred to the courts, lawyers say, the threat of deportation could be imminent.

“It’s all part of a plan to take legal people and make them illegal,” said Ira Kurzban, one of the attorneys who represented Haitians in the case that went to the Supreme Court. “That’s what they’ve essentially done.”

The United States is a signatory to the 1967 United Nations protocol on refugees, which prohibits member countries from expelling immigrants to nations where they face serious threats to their lives.

Trump officials, Kurzban said, are betraying that principle and turning the asylum system into “a joke.”

“At a 30,000-foot level it sure looks like a deportation machine,” he said.

Trump officials argue that smugglers have exploited the U.S. asylum system, flooding it with weak applications so that immigrants may live and work legally in the United States as their cases drag through the system.

Asylum creates a path to U.S. permanent residency and, eventually, citizenship. To be eligible, applicants must show that they face persecution in their homeland based on their race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or another trait that makes them a specific target. They also must pass background checks and apply within one year of arrival.

The more than 400,000 pending asylum cases before USCIS that could be sent to deportation proceedings largely involve individuals who filed for refuge after being in the United States for more than a year, officials said in announcing the rule.

Federal law says asylum seekers must apply within a year of arriving, and officials contend that most late applicants referred to immigration judges in the past few years have been ineligible for an exception to that requirement.

Advocates for immigrants have long argued that people fleeing for their lives are not well versed in the intricacies and deadlines of U.S. immigration laws, and note that the immigration courts do not assign them public defenders. Sometimes bona fide applications are filed late, they say, and federal law allows judges to overlook that in extraordinary cases.

Though the new rule took effect immediately Tuesday, USCIS said it will accept public comments and later issue a final rule with its responses.

KEARNY, Ariz. — Mayor Curtis Stacy starts every morning checking two websites that tell him how much he needs to worry about water.

One site tells him about the reservoir that supplies his tiny desert town — it’s effectively empty. The other site tells him if the town gets additional water that other communities with more senior rights aren’t using; right now, the answer is yes.

But Stacy tries to remind Kearny’s roughly 2,000 residents that they could easily tip back into crisis mode, just like this spring. In newsletters, he underscores that fragility with no fewer than 20 exclamation points. If other communities call for more water, they will have to cut back again.

“!!!!!!!!!!THIS SITUATION IS ALMOST CERTAINLY TEMPORARY!!!!!!!!!!” he wrote in one bulletin posted on the Kearny Facebook page and taped up and down the glass doors of the town office.

Kearny is an extreme example of the water crunch facing communities across the West as states and cities stare down a future of “megadrought” and fight over scarce resources. An unusually dry winter this year left the Southwest parched, with not enough water for everyone laying claim to it. In the complex web of water rights that govern how that short supply is distributed, the tiny town of Kearny comes last.

Other cities around the West could face similar challenges and cutbacks. The federal government is set to release a plan for the shrinking supply of Colorado River water this summer that could force dramatic cuts.

The plan, part of which the Bureau of Reclamation described in an Environmental Impact Statement early on Friday morning, comes at a time of escalating crisis for the Colorado River, a crucial water source for seven states, 30 Native tribes and a swath of northwestern Mexico.

Arizona, California, and Nevada will be required to curb their use of the water from the Colorado River by a combined 20% over the next two years — and could ultimately face even larger cuts, according to three officials familiar with negotiations over a long-awaited federal plan to rescue the depleted waterway.

Kearny is not directly affected by the Colorado River negotiations, officials say, but its dilemma shows how dwindling resources — and water-rights rules that can feel arbitrary to those most affected — can upend daily life.

Kearny usually uses about 280 acre-feet of water a year; this year, it was allocated 77 acre-feet (one acre-foot supplies about three homes annually). Town officials realized they were on track to run out of water in July.

The crisis forced steep reductions in water use and now hangs over the town’s future, testing residents’ ability to adapt to shortage. It has also consumed much of Stacy’s final year in charge, giving him new gray hairs and new worries about his hometown, a community where everyone knows everyone and where you can get ahold of the mayor by walking into his office.

Stacy thought he had seen Kearny’s worst crisis in 2024, when a wildfire blazed toward the edge of town. He ran from house to house getting people out while embers blew above their heads. But the water shortage has been, in many ways, worse.

“It’s like a slow death,” Stacy said, “instead of an actual emergency happening right in front of your eyes where you can actually help.”

The town tried to prepare residents late last year for what was coming. In a Dec. 29 letter, officials warned that the reservoir fed by their primary water source, the Gila River, was running low.

The first question in the FAQ section was, “What happens if our allotment is zero?”

Answer: “Severe restrictions will be imposed.”

Light snowfall had left the reservoir, San Carlos Lake, at about 1% of its capacity, and Kearny’s rights to that small supply were “junior” to other communities under the complicated water-rights system laid out by a court in 1935, before the town was founded.

Soon, Kearny was on track to run out of water by midsummer.

“For years, they’ve been telling us that cutbacks were coming,” said Eric Armenta, Kearny’s public works director. “But it never did come until now. And it came drastically.”

In late March, Kearny imposed “Level 5″ restrictions on water — the most stringent possible. A declaration of emergency told residents they could use water only for the essentials; the mayor went door to door to convey the situation’s gravity. There would be no washing of cars, no kiddie pools, and no watering of grass. Even the Little League field would go dry.

“Laundry — wear it a second or even third day,” the mayor advised in another bulletin days later. “Bathing/Showers — no better time to connect with your significant other.”

“What is the Town doing about this?” he wrote in the next note. “This emergency is our entire focus.”

By the end of April, the message was sinking in and the town was using 30% less water. But when relief came later in the spring, town leaders were torn.

The authority that oversaw river rights had given Kearny extra water, but only because those with higher priority were not requesting water. The moment that changed, Kearny would need to cut back again.

The town council voted to go back to “Level 1” restrictions, which meant cutbacks were optional. “Flush, shower, keep the trees alive, launder your clothes, live a normal life again,” the mayor wrote.

Not everyone thought the reprieve was a good idea. “We knew exactly what was going to happen — people were just going to use it freely,” said Armenta, the public works director.

Kearny was not yet in the clear.

Bits of grass around town were starting to turn green again in early July, but mostly the yards were still parched. Public works supervisor Jake Acton looked away when he drove by the Little League field — still dead and brown.

Kearny officials were no longer worried about running out of water in the short term, but their broader challenge lingered.

Fourth of July fireworks were canceled due to “dry conditions and limited water”; fire damage aside, Kearny could not afford the thousands of gallons it might take to put out a wildfire. And some officials worried news of their water woes would scare away businesses, scare away homeowners, and make it even harder to recruit teachers.

Armenta stopped by an old rehabilitated well set to start pumping in a matter of weeks. No one knew how much it would produce until it started functioning, and they were trying not to get their hopes up.

“We want above 50 gallons per minute,” Armenta said over the roar of a machine clearing sand and debris. “Below that, it’s a waste of time.”

Armenta was spending some 90 hours a week, he said, on the public works job — a position he took early this year because he knew the city was headed for trouble. He did it because his family is here, and he doesn’t want to leave.

“My mom still lives here. My sister lives here. I want to live here,” he said. “My kids, I want them to be able to always come back to Kearny.”

At the bar across the street from the Little League field, people wondered when the monsoon season would bring some real rain. But everyone thought the town would get through the water crisis. When Kathy Taft asked her friend Dave Olsen if the town was “really going to run out of water,” Olsen answered without hesitation.

“No,” he said. “I just don’t see that happening.”

The well, when it began operating in mid-July, was a letdown. At 40 gallons a minute, it would cover only a fraction of the town’s need.

San Carlos Lake, meanwhile, remains close to empty. The lake closed to the public in June after it grew so dry that -— in the words of the local recreation department — “approximately 100% of the fish population” died.

Now the mayor was worrying about 2027. If the lake didn’t recover, Kearny’s apportionment of river water next year could be zero.

“We got 77 [acre-feet] this year and we were able to stretch that,” Stacy said. “You can’t stretch zero.”

What then? There were still other avenues to try. Hydrologists were looking for well sites farther out; a local mining company could give Kearny some of its water. Wastewater could be put back into the ground and reused.

And the monsoon rains were picking up. Away on a trip to Minnesota, Stacy watched with interest as a flood watch went into effect for much of the Gila River Basin, which includes Kearny.

With some strong storms, the town’s fortunes could change again.