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Attorney General William Tong joined a comment letter today to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin seeking to slow federal immigration enforcement while wrapping the effort in the language of compassion.
DHS says the rule change could streamline operations. It would apply to about 130,000 future applicants a year and affect up to 444,000 cases already pending in the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) asylum backlog.
Tong called the policy “willful ignorance,” accused President Trump of refusing asylum seekers “the basic opportunity to tell their story,” and labeled the change “a cruel betrayal of everything this country has stood for since our founding.”
Asylum claims already receive due process — often years of it. Immigration courts are not secret tribunals; they are the actual venue Congress created for contested claims. Tong’s letter, however, treats an interview with a USCIS officer as a sacred entitlement and a hearing before an immigration judge as a punishment. That inversion only makes sense if the real goal is strategic delay. Delaying keeps people in the country on work authorization and feeds the caseload that state-funded legal shops, clinics, NGOs, and advocacy networks exist to serve.
Tong and the coalition warns the rule will “strain” those providers. He is asking the federal government to keep a pipeline open because the state’s political ecosystem has built programs around it. He also claims the rule will hurt tax revenue and business. That is the same argument used every time enforcement tightens: the labor market cannot function unless the asylum system remains a back door.
The coalition also leans heavily on unaccompanied minors and the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). Vulnerable children deserve a lawful process. However, their unique status does not entitle every adult applicant—or all 444,000 pending cases—to a slower track designed to outlast the administration. If Tong wanted a narrow carve-out for unaccompanied children, he could argue for one without trying to freeze the whole system.
In sending this letter, Attorney General Tong joins the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
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