U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced this week that it is resuming asylum application processing for applicants from “non-high-risk” countries. This announcement partially reverses the agency’s complete pause, which was triggered by national security threats identified in 2025.
These threats most notably included the November 26, 2025, shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan asylee who entered under the Biden administration’s “Operation Allies Welcome”, and the separate conviction of Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi. Tawhedi is an Afghan national who pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring and attempting to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and receiving, attempting to receive, and conspiring to receive firearms and ammunition in furtherance of a federal crime of terrorism. Government officials alleged that Tawhedi was planning to commit a terrorist attack in the United States on election day 2024.
A USCIS spokesperson reported that, “USCIS has lifted the adjudicative hold for thoroughly screened asylum seekers from non-high-risk countries," and confirmed that maximum screening and vetting will continue. While the spokesperson did not specify which countries will be considered “non-high-risk”, they will most likely exclude the countries that were subject to USCIS’s December 2, 2025, and January 1, 2026, adjudication holds for non-asylum benefit requests. The countries include: Afghanistan, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Benin, Burkina Faso, Burma (Myanmar), Burundi, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Cuba, Dominica, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, The Gambia, Haiti, Iran, Laos, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga, Turkmenistan, Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
USCIS’s asylum division is facing intensified pressures as it works through a system strained on multiple fronts. The crisis at the southern border beginning in FY 2021 significantly increased the number of pending asylum applications, contributing to a historic affirmative-asylum backlog that continues to strain the agency today. The affirmative-asylum portfolio consists of asylum applications filed affirmatively with USCIS, usually by aliens legally in the country, rather than as a defense to removal. (Defensive asylum applications are typically handled in immigration court, under the Department of Justice.) In FY 2025, DHS reported over 1.5 million pending affirmative asylum cases with USCIS — the highest pile-up ever for this caseload.
At the same time, the Trump administration’s renewed emphasis on heightened security across the immigration system has introduced more rigorous vetting requirements, which add adjudicative complexity and time to each case. Together, these pressures have created a challenging environment for agency leadership that must balance efficient processing with thorough screening.
The resumption of asylum processing, however, does not signal a return to the status quo. The government has emphasized that stricter vetting will continue, and the broader immigration restrictions, including travel bans from high-risk countries identified in Trump’s presidential proclamation, remain in effect.