The Trump administration has imposed the most sweeping internal freeze on immigration benefits in decades, ordering United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to halt all asylum adjudications and suspend a broad range of applications from nationals of 19 “high-risk” countries, while reopening thousands of previously approved cases for fresh security screening.
The directive, issued this week to USCIS field offices, follows a series of violent incidents involving Afghan nationals admitted under earlier programmes. Those cases prompted the White House to conclude that vetting procedures between 2021 and 2024 were “dangerously insufficient”, triggering a system-wide overhaul of immigration screening.
The freeze is the domestic counterpart to Presidential Proclamation 10949, which in June barred the entry of nationals from 19 countries. Now the same nationalities face extensive restrictions inside the US. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has already recommended that the travel-ban list be expanded to more than 30 countries.
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom — not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to Americans. We don’t want them. Not one,” Noem said in a statement posted on her X account.
