Trump Seeks Tougher Work Permit Rules For Illegals With Asylum Claims

The Trump administration is proposing new regulations that would make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to receive work permits.

Under the Biden administration, as millions of illegal immigrants poured across the southern border, they were afforded the opportunity to receive work permits rapidly before even receiving immigration status. The new proposed rule would make it more difficult for illegal border crossers whose asylum claims have no standing to obtain work permits.

“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,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said.

“We are proposing an overhaul of the asylum system to enforce the rules and reduce the backlog we inherited from the prior administration. Aliens are not entitled to work while we process their asylum applications. The Trump administration is strengthening the vetting of asylum applicants and restoring integrity to the asylum and work authorization processes,” the spokesperson added.

The plan would include a pause on the issuance of work permits for asylum seekers until they’re able to process applications within 180 days, according to the Friday notice.

It could take between 14 and 173 years to reach that benchmark, according to Reuters.

Once the rule is imposed, new illegal border crossers will be ineligible for work permits, according to the plan. Illegal immigrants who notify federal immigration authorities within 48 hours of crossing the border for fear of returning to their home country based on “persecution or torture” will be exempt from the rule.

“USCIS [United States Citizenship and Immigration Services] expects this rule to support another downward trend in the long term, but USCIS also expects that, upon implementation of this rule, new EAD [Employment Authorization Document] applications for pending asylum applicants would be paused for an extended period, possibly many years,” the notice read.

United States Citizenship and Immigration Services currently has more than 1.4 million pending asylum claims on its plate, the agency said.

Work permits for asylum applicants are not considered “an entitlement,” according to the Department of Homeland Security, which “believes that this rule is key to disincentivizing aliens from using asylum primarily as a path to seek employment authorization in the United States and to ensuring more timely processing of asylum applications.”

The Trump administration will accept public comment for 60 days before attempting to move forward with the plan.

Some illegal immigrants who previously received work permits used them to obtain commercial driver’s licenses. While behind the wheel of heavy trucks, some of them caused fatal accidents.

Chinese illegal immigrant Yisong Huang, 54, is accused of killing a 31-year-old truck driver and injuring several others in Tennessee on Dec. 9 while he was distracted by a video on his phone as he drove a tour bus.

Huang crossed the border illegally in 2023 and was swiftly released into the country. He was later granted a work permit and Social Security card.

On Wednesday, an Indian illegal immigrant, Singh Sukhdeep, behind the wheel of a semi-truck allegedly caused an accident that killed 64-year-old Terry Schultz in Hendricks County, Indiana.

Singh crossed the border illegally in 2018 and was released into the country because he was a minor at the time, federal law enforcement sources told The Daily Wire.

The illegal immigrant had a valid work permit at the time of the crash. The Indian national also had an Indiana commercial driver’s license, according to Fox News.