How have the 2023 'Circumvention of Lawful Pathways' rule and the 2024 Securing the Border IFR affected asylum grant rates and new filings?
Executive summary
The 2023 Circumvention of Lawful Pathways (CLP) rule raised the procedural and legal bar for migrants arriving outside ports of entry and—combined with the 2024 “Securing the Border” interim final rule (IFR) and related presidential proclamation—substantially reduced the share of people who pass initial asylum screening and coincided with a large drop in encounters and new presentations at the southern border, according to DHS metrics [1] [2] [3]. Civil‑society analysts and legal advocates concede a meaningful decline in screen‑in rates but stress that operational capacity, litigation, and opaque standards make it harder to quantify final asylum grant‑rate changes with precision from available public reporting [4] [5] [6].
1. How the rules change who is eligible and how claims are screened
The CLP established a rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility for many people who cross the southwest border after traveling through another country and who did not use prescribed lawful pathways, and it raised the screening standard from the pre‑2023 “credible fear” threshold to a higher “reasonable possibility” or “reasonable probability” standard for many cases [1] [7] [4]. The 2024 Securing the Border IFR layered on mechanics that immediately curtailed asylum access when encounter metrics stayed high—directing asylum officers to make negative credible‑fear determinations absent “exceptionally compelling circumstances,” and applying the higher standard to determine eligibility for withholding or CAT protection [8] [9].
2. Immediate impact on screening outcomes: fewer people “screen in”
Both DHS and independent analysts report that the percentage of migrants who pass the initial screening interview fell sharply after CLP’s enactment and after the IFR’s trigger: DHS and White House materials cite a drop in the screen‑in rate for those subject to the CLP from historical norms of 83% (2014–2019) to about 52% from May 12, 2023 through March 31, 2024 [2], and independent nonprofits track similar declines and note that CLP “reduced passage rates somewhat” though not uniformly to the Administration’s expectations [5] [4].
3. What happened to new filings, encounters, and immediate dispositions
DHS attributes a large decline in daily encounters to the combined policy package and enforcement measures: it reports that average daily encounters between ports of entry fell more than 55% in the June–August 2024 window and that repatriation rates rose (70% repatriated June–Aug versus 28% May 2023–May 2024), while DHS also shifted many encounters into expedited removal or alternative removal dispositions [3] [10]. Congressional and policy analyses confirm that since June 2024 expedited removal/ER became a dominant disposition and that monthly apprehensions and how they are processed shifted markedly after the IFR [8].
4. Effects on final asylum grant rates — what the evidence shows (and doesn’t show)
Available sources document large reductions in early screening approvals but do not provide a clear, contemporaneous, nationally aggregated number for final asylum grants after full adjudication under the new rules; historically, DHS and other notices note that only about one‑quarter of those who screened in under earlier norms ultimately received asylum in final decisions, and the rules are explicitly designed to reduce that funnel by lowering the number who ever reach full adjudication [2] [1]. Analysts therefore conclude the rules reduce the pipeline that produces eventual grants, but precise changes to long‑term grant rates remain difficult to calculate from the cited materials alone because the new rules change both who is screened in and the procedural pathway to a final decision, and litigation and implementation variations further cloud national grant‑rate tallies [4] [6].
5. Competing interpretations, legal fights, and hidden incentives
DHS and the White House frame the measures as necessary to incentivize lawful pathways and restore manageability to the asylum system, citing programmatic tools (CBP One/CBP Home, Safe Mobility Offices) and operational results (reduced encounters and higher returns) as evidence of success [10] [3]. Advocacy groups, immigration bar organizations, and some legal rulings have pushed back: they highlight complex exemptions, capacity shortfalls in asylum officer staffing, and court challenges that have vacated or questioned CLP and IFR elements, arguing the rules can improperly deny access to asylum and shift decision‑making burdens to under‑resourced officers and judges [6] [4] [11]. These disagreements reflect an implicit policy tradeoff: faster returns and fewer screenings versus narrower access to asylum and greater litigation risk.