Asylum-seekers with no criminal records are being arrested across the country as the Trump administration seeks to remove immigrants seeking legal ways to stay 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 US communities as their cases played out.
The arrests follow a pattern, lawyers and attorneys told NBC News. One day, asylum-seekers stay with their families, often having lived in the US for years. Then a job or drive to work ends with them plunging into ICE’s vast detention system. There, they face difficult conditions and a more hostile immigration process, as well as pressure to self-deport, advocates and families say. His arrests have been reported across the US, including Minnesota, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Maine, Alaska, Wisconsin, California and Texas.
Attorney Robin Nice said six asylum applicants who had no criminal problems were detained by ICE, a federal immigration law enforcement operation that swept Maine in late January. Some were finishing their shift at work. One was driving to work. One was going to buy medicine and groceries. One was taken on the way to get a US passport for their newborn baby.
“It’s completely unprecedented,” said Nice, who about six months ago had the confidence to tell his clients that if they had pending applications for asylum, they didn’t have to worry about being detained. “We talked about it like we were struck by lightning.”
People from all over the world come to the US seeking 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 seeking asylum fluctuates from year to year. From October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2025, more than 28,000 of the more than 118,000 applicants were granted asylum and nearly 5,000 received other forms of immigration relief. The administration says the backlog of cases includes many “facilitated applications.”
Advocates and advocates say the new practice of detaining asylum-seekers is harmful and unnecessary, as applicants are already known to the government and are going through a legal process that includes going to all of their government check-ins. They say the administration is holding law-abiding immigrants in detention centers with inhumane conditions, where they lack adequate medical care and access to their lawyers and are given inedible food.
“It destroys people’s sense of stability as they try to do the right thing and pursue their rights to safety in the United States,” said Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor and director of its Immigrant Rights Clinic. “I’ve had clients in custody, literally from New Jersey to Texas, who have abandoned their cases because the conditions are so unbearable.”
A Department of Homeland Security spokesman previously denied that there were “subprime conditions” in ICE detention facilities.
DHS said in a statement that “a pending asylum case does not confer any form of legal status in the United States. If a person enters our country illegally, they are subject to detention or deportation. Every illegal alien receives due process.”
“USCIS’ top priority remains the screening and verification of all aliens seeking to come, live or work in the United States,” the statement said, referring to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency responsible for legal immigration. The department declined to provide data on how many asylum-seekers with active cases have been detained under the Trump administration.
Read more about immigration enforcement
If Nice can release six of its clients, asylum-seekers across the country are in detention, including the husband of a woman named Tatiana.
The life she and her husband had built for their two daughters in Florida for 10 years was torn apart in December when, while going to work as an industrialist, her husband never came home. The family is seeking asylum after fleeing Ecuador and says it has faced death threats for speaking out politically. Tatiana is a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a membership organization serving asylum seekers in the US. Immigration asked that her full name not be used for fear of retaliation.
“You feel suffocated. I’m a single mother now with my two daughters, trying to make ends meet, rent, food,” she told NBC News in Spanish, adding that she works 11- to 12-hour days. “I’m counting every penny to make up for it all.”
The arrest has upended the life of her daughter, a high school honor student teenager with dreams of going to college in the US who is now looking for a job to help her family. “College is coming soon, and we can’t afford it,” Tatiana worries.
“She tells me, ‘Mom, don’t worry, everything will be fine,'” Tatiana said, her voice breaking. “But I’m heartbroken, because I don’t know if it’s going to be okay.”
Since his arrest in December, Tatiana’s husband has been moved to various detention facilities in Florida dubbed the “alligator Alcatraz,” where detainees have complained of unsanitary conditions, swarms of mosquitoes and a lack of medical treatment. The administration has denied allegations of poor conditions at the facility.
“They were bringing my husband documents for voluntary deportation,” Tatiana said.
She is still fighting for her husband’s release.
“He’s devastated to see how difficult everything is for us financially. He feels powerless,” he said. “We try to encourage him. We try to tell him that this won’t last forever and that God will give us relief.”
Conditions are too much for Cesar Pulido, who agreed in February to voluntarily leave the country after more than six months in detention.
They say it was never made clear to them and their son, 19-year-old Cesar Andres Caicedo Hincapiye, when ICE detained Pulido in the middle of their asylum case.
“When we first came here, we had nothing, so we started building our lives from scratch,” Caicedo Hinkapie told NBC News. “School was difficult, work was difficult for him, culture and language were difficult. Then we were going somewhere, we were already building something. This happened, and it stopped my life. It stopped my father’s life.”
Now, Kaisedo Hinkapie, a longtime warehouse worker struggling to pay rent and attorney fees, has lost a work permit issued under his father’s asylum case, which ended with a self-deportation agreement. It is unclear when his father will be removed from the US
Pulido told NBC News from a detention center in Texas that she and her son fled Colombia after threats to their lives amid political persecution. He said in Spanish that he did everything to make sure he “went the right way” in the US.
“I have not committed any crimes here or in my country, but I don’t know how long I will be detained here,” he said before agreeing to self-deport.
“I was judged as a criminal,” he said. “They treat me like a criminal here.”
Pulido was “an associate of a South American theft group operating throughout Southern California,” DHS said in a statement, without providing evidence. The agency did not say whether Pulido had been charged or convicted of a crime. It did not respond to requests for comment to explain its claim.
“He entered the United States as a B-2 tourist visitor under the Biden administration in 2023 and overstayed his visa,” the statement said, adding that Pulido “will remain in ICE custody until removed from the US.”
“No application for asylum shall preclude immigration enforcement,” DHS said.
In another major overhaul of the asylum system, the agency last month proposed a rule denying asylum-seekers work authorization while their applications are being processed.
“For too long, a fraudulent asylum claim has been an easy way to work in the United States, flooding our immigration system with unmerited applications,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement announcing the proposed rule. “Aliens are not eligible to work while we process their asylum applications. The Trump administration is strengthening vetting of asylum applicants and restoring integrity to the asylum and work authorization processes.”
Caicedo Hinkapiye said he wants to work with his lawyer to see if he can apply for a visa and finish college.
“It’s scary. I don’t really know how to take care of myself,” she said. “I never expected it to be like this.”
Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s traumatic,” he said, “not just for that person or their family, but for the community around them and the people who depend on them who didn’t know something like that could happen.”
