Earlier this year, the Biden Administration began speeding up the asylum application process for a subset of individuals subject to expedited removal. December 1st marks six months since this Asylum Processing Rule was implemented. As of the end of September, 99 people had been interviewed under this new process, and now the Administration is gearing up to expand the rule to more asylum seekers.

To many observers, this is a welcome reform. The average asylum processing time is longer than four years, creating an ever-growing backlog of cases. There are now more than half a million asylum claims pending with USCIS and two-thirds of a million claims pending in Immigration Court. While we clearly need a more efficient approach, if the goal of our asylum system is to protect those at risk of persecution in other countries, an asylum process that works too quickly undermines that intention.