The Trump administration on Tuesday issued new rules for visa applications that could limit asylum claims in the United States, ordering diplomatic missions to ask applicants for nonimmigrant visas if they fear returning home to their country — and to refuse U.S. travel documents for those who say yes, according to a cable reviewed by The Washington Post.
The directive comes after a federal appeals court ruled late last week that President Donald Trump’s declaration of an “invasion” at the U.S.-Mexico border to restrict entry from asylum seekers was illegal, effectively clearing the way to reopen the country to migrants fleeing persecution in their own countries.
It was not clear when asylum processing would resume, and the Trump administration has indicated its intent to challenge the decision on appeal.
The diplomatic cable, outlined in a message from the office of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, said that effective immediately, all consular officers “should request that a nonimmigrant visa applicant affirm that he or she does not fear harm or mistreatment in returning to his or her country of nationality or former habitual residence, and document the response in case notes.”
U.S. officials will be required to ask two questions of applicants: “Have you experienced harm or mistreatment in your country of nationality or last habitual residence?” and “Do you fear harm or mistreatment in returning to your country of nationality or permanent residence?”
“Visa applicants must respond verbally with a ‘no’ to both questions for the consular officer to continue with visa issuance,” the cable states.
The new rules are the latest effort by the administration to sharply limit the number of foreign nationals who receive asylum in the United States.
“They’re trying to systematically demolish any means by which a persecuted person could seek protection and safety in the United States,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International.
Under federal law, foreign nationals can seek asylum once in the country if they face “persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution” back home. Foreign nationals can be resettled as a refugee in the United States under a separate process that takes place outside of the country.
The Trump administration has sought to sharply limit both processes, barring almost all refugees other than White South Africans, citing alleged fraud and risks to U.S. citizens. The number of monthly asylum seekers at the southwest border of the U.S. plummeted by almost 40,000 in December 2024 to just 26 in February 2025, the month after Trump took office, according to an analysis this month by David Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.
All told, the administration has made deep cuts to legal immigration, including a travel ban affecting citizens of 39 countries, reductions in visas for students and temporary workers and the cancellation of temporary protected status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of migrants from 13 countries.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a lawsuit against the Trump administration’s attempt to withdraw TPS for 350,000 Haitian and 6,000 Syrian immigrants.
The State Department cable sent this week does not explicitly state what would happen if a visa recipient who responds in the negative to the questions were to later apply for asylum. However, such a scenario could leave the applicant vulnerable to allegations of visa fraud and potentially deportation.
“An applicant’s fear of returning to his or her country of nationality or permanent residence calls into question an applicant’s intended purpose of travel and immigrant intent at the time of visa application,” the cable said.
The cable also suggests that “the high number of aliens claiming asylum in the United States indicates that many aliens misrepresent this intention to consular officers in the visa application process.”
In the cable, the administration cites an executive order Trump signed in January 2025 that called for the reevaluation of all visa programs to ensure they were not abused by “foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”
In that order, the administration called for “sufficient safeguards … to prevent any refugee or stateless individual from being admitted to the United States without undergoing stringent identification verification.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Advocates for refugees and asylum seekers said the new policy further damages the image of the United States as a safe haven for oppressed people.
“What’s really striking about this is how it just completely abandons any pretense that the U.S. cares about protection against persecution,” said Konyndyk. “You’re explicitly asking someone: ‘Are you being persecuted in your country?’ And if they say ‘yes,’ the U.S. government’s official answer is: ‘Okay, stay there.’”
Konyndyk, whose organization advocates for displaced people, said if the Trump administration’s vetting procedures had been in place in previous decades, it would have barred Iranians in the 1970s, Soviet dissidents during the Cold War and German Jews in the 1930s.
“A lot of people would’ve been left out by this,” Konyndyk said.
John Hudson and David Nakamura contributed to this report.
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