The Trump administration said it would reduce how long work permits are valid for refugees and asylum seekers, intensifying a sweeping crackdown on legal immigration after an Afghan national was charged with the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington.
The federal government will now require some migrants to renew their work permits every 18 months instead of every five years, according to a statement from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Thursday. The agency said the change would help it screen and vet migrants more often, allowing it to identify people with “potentially harmful intent so they can be processed for removal.”
The change applies to refugees, asylum seekers and people granted asylum, among others who qualify to work in the United States. It affects migrants who have pending applications or who file applications on or after Dec. 5. As of June, about 434,000 asylum seekers and about 24,000 people granted asylum had pending applications for work permits, according to the latest government data. More than 12,000 refugees also had pending applications.
“Reducing the maximum validity period for employment authorization will ensure that those seeking to work in the United States do not threaten public safety or promote harmful anti-American ideologies,” Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in the statement. “After the attack on National Guard service members in our nation’s capital by an alien who was admitted into this country by the previous administration, it’s even more clear that U.S.C.I.S. must conduct frequent vetting of aliens.”
The five-year authorization itself had not been in place long. The Biden administration had expanded it from two years in 2023, saying the change was “in the interest of reducing the burden on both U.S.C.I.S. and the public.”
Some immigrant advocates said the move threatened to put migrants in limbo. Kennji Kizuka, the director of asylum policy at the International Rescue Committee, an organization that assists thousands of refugees and other migrants in the United States, said that migrants often tried to renew their work permits well before their expiration date, but that it could take several months to receive approval.
“That means that people are more and more likely to fall into periods where their work authorization has expired and they’re not able to get it renewed,” he said. “That makes life more impossible for asylum seekers to be able to support themselves and their families.”
The change is the latest in a blizzard of actions the administration has taken to curtail paths for immigrants to legally live and work in the United States since last week’s shooting, which left one of the Guard members dead. Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan man, was accused of the shooting and charged with first-degree murder. He has pleaded not guilty.
After the attack, Trump administration officials accused the Biden administration of failing to properly screen migrants from “high-risk countries.” But critics have questioned whether Mr. Trump is using an isolated killing to build on an already sprawling campaign against immigration that they say goes beyond his vow to target the “worst of the worst.”
Mr. Lakanwal arrived in the United States in September 2021 through a program called Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden-era program meant to assist U.S. allies after the Taliban’s retaking of power in Afghanistan. He was later granted asylum in April during the Trump administration.
In the past week, federal officials have also paused decisions on asylum applications and halted immigration applications for people from the 19 countries subject to President’s Trump travel ban. Immigration officers will also reassess applications that have been approved in recent years for foreign nationals from those countries.
Madeleine Ngo covers immigration and economic policy for The Times.
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