“Today’s proposed rule is a significant step toward rebuilding the capacity of our asylum system and will help to alleviate the extreme backlogs that now exist in the review process. Ensuring an effective, efficient and humane asylum process is essential to our country’s ability to welcome people forced to migrate to our borders through a vital legal immigration pathway. At the same time, we must ensure that expediting screening does not undermine due process for people seeking protection. It is imperative that the Biden Administration immediately begin working with legal service providers across the country to ensure that asylum seekers have access to legal counsel.

“For too long, our country has lacked the capacity and commitment to effectively execute our asylum system, in some instances purposefully under-resourcing these efforts, or establishing inhumane and unlawful restrictive policies like Remain in Mexico and Title 42, as part of a flawed strategy to use cruelty and chaos to deter people from even trying to access protection in the United States. The human consequences of this failed and flawed strategy have been and continue to be profoundly disastrous.

“We hope that this rule can be used as a catalyst for continued commitment to rebuilding our processing capacity at the border and to the integrity and necessity of the asylum system. This will only be possible if the administration finally ends its use of Title 42, and follows through on its efforts to end Remain in Mexico, which is being considered by the Supreme Court. We urge them to follow through and end these devastating policies without further delay.”