Asylum seekers increasingly being detained and pressured to leave the U.S.

Asylum-seekers with no criminal records are being detained around the country as the Trump administration seeks to remove immigrants seeking legal pathways to remain in the United States.

Asylum-seekers with no criminal records are being detained around the country as the Trump administration seeks to remove immigrants looking for legal pathways to remain in the United States. The move is a major departure from previous practice, under which asylum applicants were allowed to work and build lives in U.S. communities as their cases played out.

The arrests follow a pattern, attorneys and advocates told NBC News. One day, the asylum-seekers are with their families, often after having lived in the U.S. for years. Then an errand or a drive to work ends with their being swept into ICE’s vast detention system. There, they face difficult conditions and a more adversarial immigration process, along with pressure to self-deport, the attorneys and families say. Their arrests have been reported around the U.S., including in Minnesota, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Maine, Alaska, Wisconsin, California and Texas.

Six of attorney Robin Nice’s asylum applicants were detained by ICE despite not having criminal issues, she said, as a federal immigration law enforcement operation swept over Maine near the end of January. Some were finishing shifts at work. One was driving to work. One was going to buy medicine and groceries. One was picked up on the way to get their newborn a U.S. passport.

“This is absolutely unprecedented,” Nice said, adding that up until around six months ago she felt confident telling her clients that if they had pending applications for asylum, they did not need to worry about being detained. “We talked about it in the same way as getting struck by lightning.”

People from around the world come to the U.S. to claim asylum, some fleeing war, violence or religious and political persecution. As of December, more than 2.3 million immigrants were awaiting asylum hearings, a number that has been growing in recent years. The number of people who obtain asylum fluctuates year to year. From Oct. 1, 2024, to Sept. 30, 2025, more than 28,000 out of more than 118,000 applicants were granted asylum, and nearly 5,000 received some other form of immigration relief. The administration says the backlog of cases includes many “meritless applications.”