in effect
This is a final rule jointly issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice that partially withdraws specific technical amendments from a 2020 rule called the “Security Bars and Processing” rule, while confirming that the rule’s core public-health provisions take effect on December 31, 2025. The withdrawal removes only the procedural changes that had become incompatible with newer regulations issued during the years the 2020 rule was delayed.
Eight specific amendment instructions from the original December 23, 2020 rule (instructions 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, and 14) are withdrawn as of December 29, 2025, because they would conflict with or overwrite regulations issued in the interim. What survives and takes effect December 31, 2025 is the substantive public-health provision: that a communicable disease posing an emergency public health risk can qualify as a “danger to the security of the United States,” making a noncitizen ineligible for asylum and ineligible for withholding of removal. The procedural changes the 2020 rule would have made to credible fear screening — such as making consideration of certain eligibility bars mandatory and routing certain applicants into asylum-and-withholding-only proceedings — are not going into effect because those portions are withdrawn. Immigration officers may still consider the 2020 rule’s public-health “security danger” interpretation during fear screenings under separate, already-active rules that make such consideration discretionary rather than mandatory.
Noncitizens in expedited removal proceedings who claim fear of persecution or torture are most directly affected, because the public-health security bar can now be formally applied to make them ineligible for asylum and statutory withholding of removal if a qualifying public health emergency exists. USCIS asylum officers and immigration judges are also affected, as they must apply the newly effective public-health bar definition while continuing to follow the procedural credible-fear screening framework established by the intervening rules that replaced the withdrawn portions.