Asylum seekers without criminal records are being detained across the country as the Trump administration seeks to remove immigrants seeking legal means to stay in the United States. The move is a major departure from previous practice, where asylum seekers were allowed to work and build lives in US communities while their cases progressed.
Their arrests followed a pattern, lawyers and attorneys told NBC News. One day, asylum seekers are with their families, often after living in the US for years. Then a job or a drive to work ends up being swept into the massive ICE detention system. There, they face harsh conditions and a difficult immigration process, as well as pressure to deport themselves, advocates and families say. Their arrests were reported in America, including Minnesota, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Oklahoma, Maine, Alaska, Wisconsin, California and Texas.
Six asylum-seekers attorney Robin Nice has detained by ICE despite having no criminal history, she said, as immigration enforcement swept Maine in late January. Others were finishing their shifts at work. One was driving to work. Another was going to buy medicine and groceries. Another was picked up on the way to get her baby a US passport.
“This has never happened,” said Nice, adding that up until six months ago, he felt confident telling his clients that if their asylum applications were pending, they didn’t need to worry about being arrested. “We talked about it in the same way as being struck by lightning.”
People from all over the world come to the US to seek asylum, some fleeing war, violence or religious and political persecution. As of December, more than 2.3 million immigrants were awaiting an asylum hearing, a number that has been rising in recent years. The number of people receiving asylum fluctuates from year to year. As of Oct. 1, 2024, to Sep. 30, 2025, more than 28,000 of the more than 118,000 applicants received asylum, and nearly 5,000 received other forms of immigration assistance. Administrators say the backlog of cases includes many “frivolous applications”.
Advocates and lawyers say that the new practice of detaining asylum seekers is dangerous and unnecessary, as applicants are already known to the government and undergo a legal process that includes going to all those who have entered the government. They say the administration is putting law-abiding immigrants in detention centers with inhumane conditions, where they don’t have adequate health 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 asylum applications in the United States,” said Elora Mukherjee, a Columbia Law School professor and director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic. “I’ve had clients incarcerated, from New Jersey to Texas, who dropped their cases because the conditions were unbearable.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security has previously denied claims that there are “substandard conditions” at ICE detention facilities.
DHS said in a statement that “a pending asylum case does NOT grant any type of legal status in the United States. If someone enters our country illegally, they will be arrested or deported. Each illegal alien receives due process.”
“USCIS’ top priority remains the screening and vetting of all aliens seeking to come, live, or work in the United States,” said the statement, referring to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, the DHS agency responsible for immigration. The department declined to provide details on how many asylum seekers with active cases have been detained during the Trump administration.
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Although Nice was able to free six of his clients, asylum seekers across the country are still being held, including the husband of a woman named Tatiana.
She said that the life she and her husband built for their two daughters in Florida for more than 10 years collapsed in December when she went to work, and her husband did not come home. The family is seeking asylum after fleeing Ecuador and says they have faced death threats for speaking out about politics. Tatiana, a member of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, a membership organization working for asylum seekers in the US, he asked that his full name not be used for fear of retribution for immigration.
“You feel overwhelmed, overwhelmed. Now I’m a single mother with my two daughters, trying to make ends meet, rent, eat,” she told NBC News in Spanish, adding that she was working 11- to 12-hour days. “I count every penny so that I can cover everything.”
The arrest also improved the life of his daughter, who is an honor student in high school and dreams of going to college in the US. The teenager is now looking for a job to help her family. Tatiana worries that “college is coming soon, and we won’t be able to afford it.”
“He says to me, ‘Mom, don’t worry, everything will be fine,'” Tatiana said, her voice breaking. “But my heart hurts because I don’t know if it will be alright.
Since his arrest in December, Tatiana’s husband has been moved to various detention facilities, including one in Florida known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” where inmates complain of unsanitary conditions, mosquito bites and a lack of medical treatment. Management has denied allegations of poor conditions at the facility.
“They kept bringing my husband papers for voluntary eviction,” said Tatiana.
They are still fighting for the release of her husband.
“He was sad when he saw that everything is difficult for us financially, he feels powerless,” he said. We are trying to encourage him, we are trying to tell him that this will not last forever and that God will give us a solution.”
Conditions were very difficult for César Pulido, who agreed in February to leave the country voluntarily after more than six months in prison.
He and his son, César Andrés Caicedo Hincapié, 19, were in the middle of their asylum case when ICE arrested Pulido for reasons they say were not made clear to them.
“When we arrived here, we had nothing, so we started building our lives from scratch,” Caicedo Hincapié told NBC News. “School was difficult, his work was difficult, the culture and language were difficult, and then we got to a place where we are still building. This just happened, it stopped my life, it stopped my father’s life.”
Now, Caicedo Hincapié, who has been working long days in a warehouse struggling to pay rent and attorney’s fees, has lost his work permit granted under his father’s asylum case, which ended with his plea deal. It is not clear when the father will be removed from the US
Pulido told NBC News from a prison in Texas that she and her son fled Colombia following threats to their lives amid political persecution. They are doing everything they can to make sure they “go the right way” in the US, he said in Spanish.
“I haven’t 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 release himself.
“I am judged as if I am a criminal,” he said. “They treat me like a criminal here.”
DHS said in a statement without providing evidence that Pulido “was a member of the South American Theft Group operating throughout southern California.” The agency did not say whether Pulido was charged or convicted. It did not respond to requests for comment to elaborate on its request.
“He entered the United States in 2023 under the Biden administration as a B-2 visitor and overstayed his visa,” the statement said, adding that Pulido “will remain in ICE custody pending removal from the US.”
“Any application for asylum does not preclude immigration enforcement,” DHS said.
The agency proposed legislation last month that would deny asylum seekers work permits while their applications are being processed, in another major overhaul of the asylum system.
“For too long, the fraudulent claim of asylum has been an easy way to operate in the United States, cluttering our immigration system with frivolous claims,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement announcing the proposed rule. “Aliens do not have the right to work while we process their asylum applications. The Trump administration is strengthening screening of asylum seekers and restoring integrity to the asylum and work authorization processes.”
Caicedo Hincapié said he wants to work with his lawyer to see if he can apply for a visa and finish college.
“It’s scary, I really don’t know how to take care of myself,” he said. “I never expected it to be like this.”
Conchita Cruz, co-director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s shocking,” he said, “not just for that person or their family, but for the community around them and the people they depend on who didn’t know something like that could happen.”
