Trump Admin Targets Big Immigration’s Legal Industrial Complex
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it is indeed taking additional steps to curb asylum fraud by targeting immigration attorneys it believes help file fraudulent claims. DHS directed ICE to develop policies that give ICE “greater authority” to enforce existing laws against document and related fraud, arguing that asylum is often used in cases where persecution claims are broadly and routinely asserted.
Supporters of the move say asylum applications are frequently made to obtain work permits,which can function like long-term employment authorization,and that the system is unusually vulnerable to abuse becuase asylum claims are difficult to disprove. The article also notes the Trump administration’s broader efforts to reshape immigration enforcement and legal infrastructure-such as working to increase immigration-judge hiring to speed case processing and to select judges less likely to disregard the law.
These actions are presented as part of a wider crackdown on perceived abuses in the immigration “legal industrial complex,” following a March 2025 White House memorandum that accused some immigration lawyers and pro bono groups of coaching clients to lie or conceal facts to obtain undeserved asylum-related relief.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is starting to dismantle the legal industrial complex pushing for mass migration by cracking down on immigration lawyers who file fraudulent asylum claims.
DHS directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Tuesday to develop policies to go after the attorneys who aid and abet illegals obtaining legal entry and status in the United States fraudulently, under a law already establishing penalties for document fraud. DHS said that ICE attorneys will have “greater authority to enforce the law.”
“For many years, millions of illegal aliens have committed fraud in our immigration system. No place is this more rampant than in immigration court,” DHS General Counsel James Percival said. “Protection claims like asylum are intended to cover unique and narrow circumstances, but it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country.”
The move is in line with other Trump administration attempts to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for certain groups, but will ostensibly make it more difficult for migrants to successfully gain entry into the United States using pro-immigration lawyers coaching them on how to make false claims. Under such guidance, aliens often assert that their lives are at risk in their home country, when they are nothing more than economic migrants looking to take American jobs and access welfare programs.
ASYLUM FRAUD CRACKDOWN.
For years, MILLIONS of illegal aliens have committed fraud in our immigration system — and no place is this more rampant than in immigration court.
Now, thanks to this directive, @ICEgov attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and STOP the… https://t.co/9yvFZjTlPC
— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) May 26, 2026
As The Federalist reported, 54 percent of all immigrant households are on at least one welfare program, and 59 percent of illegal immigrant households are on welfare. Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), explained that “because claims are so hard to prove, asylum will always be one of the most fraud-ridden parts of the immigration system. Limiting such fraud is especially important because asylum represents a surrender of a portion of our sovereignty, since foreigners can sneak into our country illegally and demand asylum, and if they qualify we are bound by international law to let them stay.”
It is not just that the asylum claimants gain access to the country, however. As America First Legal (AFL) stated, “the vast majority of aliens who apply for asylum, including those who entered the United States illegally, do so because it triggers access to work permits that effectively function as multi-year employment visas.” AFL recently submitted a public comment supporting DHS rulemaking that would stem the flood of migrants fraudulntly claiming asylum to obtain work permits.
Immigration courts, and the lawyers who advocate for mass migration, are part of the behemoth apparatus of world migration from the Third World into Western civilizations, commonly known as “replacement migration.”
“The United States will not legitimize global compacts that enable mass migration into America or Western nations,” the U.S. State Department wrote on May 11. “Under President Trump, the State Department will facilitate remigration — not replacement migration.”
The Trump administration appears to have lost trust in the discretion of immigration courts, as Percival emphasized in his comments on Tuesday: “Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools.”
The Trump administration has also worked to revamp the legal infrastructure propping up the influx of migrants by surging hiring of immigration judges in order to be able to process proceedings more quickly. While it is likely to relieve the bottleneck of immigration cases, the surge will also allow the Trump administration to pick judges who are not going to bypass the law in order to maximize the number of immigrants entering the country.
According to CIS, Trump’s second term has already achieved a reduction in the backlog of cases for the first time in 17 years, but there are still millions to adjudicate.
The DHS effort to rein in immigration lawyers committing fraud comes after Trump issued a memorandum in March 2025 recognizing that “the immigration bar, and powerful Big Law pro bono practices, frequently coach clients to conceal their past or lie about their circumstances when asserting their asylum claims, all in an attempt to circumvent immigration policies enacted to protect our national security and deceive the immigration authorities and courts into granting them undeserved relief.”
Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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