The Biden administration will pause its signed effort to reform asylum processing at the border, Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed Wednesday.

The so-called Asylum Processing Rule, which the administration launched to much fanfare in 2022, allowed asylum officers to grant and deny asylum to migrants at the southern border.

Administration officials emphasize that the pause is a temporary measure designed to ensure the country’s immigration services are prepared for a potential increase in border crossings after the end of Title 42, a pandemic-era measure that allows border agents to quickly process migrants. return.

But administration critics say the pause is a signal that Biden is taking the final step away from asylum process reform and back to Trump-like restrictions on the southern border.

It is tragic to see the administration abandon even minimal progress in favor of recycling Trump policies that are deliberately cruel, said Heidi Altman, policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. Altman said the policy had many issues that needed to be resolved, but it was one of this administration’s few attempts to prioritize humanitarian processing.

Administration officials had hoped that allowing asylum seekers to grant or deny asylum would make the lengthy process more efficient and reduce years of backlog in immigration courts, which had previously been the only agencies that could grant or deny asylum.

But government officials have been concerned for months that US citizenship and immigration services, which are overseas asylum seekers, could be overwhelmed by a post-Title 42 wave of border crossings. Title 42 expires May 11.

The break of the asylum seekers treatment rule halts a policy that was never fully launched. DHS had limited access to the asylum officer interviewing single adult migrants en route to cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston, New York and Chicago.

The government also plans to restrict asylum to migrants who cross the border without permission and have not applied for protection in a country they passed through on their way to the US. That policy, which the government unveiled in February but has yet to finalize, is Bidens’s. latest attempt to deter migrants from unauthorized crossing of the southern border. The government expanded the use of Title 42 in January by sending migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Honduras to Mexico. At the same time, it allowed citizens of those countries to apply for entry into the US if they have a financial sponsor.

The administration is also testing a program in which migrants undergo their first asylum screening, otherwise known as a credible fear interview in Border Guard custody. DHS officials say migrants will have access to legal services. Proponents have rejected the plan, saying it will lead to migrants spending more time in the custody of border agents.

Opponents of the policy of limiting asylum on the southern border say it mirrors former President Trump’s move to deny asylum to people who entered the US without authorization and did not seek protection in another country during their journey . A federal appeals court blocked that policy in 2020.