USCIS Opens a Charlotte Asylum Office for the Carolinas as Its Own Rule Lets Officers Skip Interviews

USCIS is opening an asylum office in Charlotte, N.C., and starting Oct. 13 it takes over affirmative asylum cases for people who live in North Carolina or South Carolina, including applications already on file. The move changes where Carolinas applicants will be interviewed, but it comes less than three months after the agency adopted a rule that lets its officers send many asylum cases to immigration court without any interview at all.

The practical details are simple. According to the USCIS alert, the office is at 128 South Tryon Street, Suite 600. Interviews and other services are by appointment only, and the office does not accept walk-ins. Applicants should go where their interview notice tells them to go and can call the USCIS Contact Center at 800-375-5283 to reschedule. Because jurisdiction follows where an applicant lives, the 10-day change-of-address requirement matters more than usual: a notice mailed to an old address is a bigger risk than a longer drive.

Charlotte follows an Atlanta asylum office that USCIS opened in July for Georgia and Alabama, Uno TV noted. Adding offices closer to applicants is one way to work down a caseload that has outgrown the system. By the end of fiscal 2025, more than 1.4 million affirmative asylum applications were pending at USCIS, the agency said in its July rule, which put the backlog at 1,434,145 cases and said applicants could wait more than 7.3 years for a decision.

That same rule complicates the picture. The interim final rule, Affirmative Asylum Referrals Without Interview, took effect July 28. It lets asylum officers refer certain applications to immigration court without interviewing the applicant, while keeping an interview before USCIS grants or denies a case. DHS estimated that up to 444,724 pending cases, about 31 percent of the backlog, could be affected; those are applications filed more than a year after the applicant’s last arrival, counted as of Dec. 11, 2025. It projected that about 132,167 new filings a year might also be referred without an interview. DHS says the change will slow the backlog’s growth and let officers spend interview time on cases that need testimony.

For people in the Carolinas, then, the real question is less where they will be interviewed than whether they will be. Applicants who filed within a year of arriving are the likeliest to sit across from an officer in Charlotte. Those who filed late, missing the one-year deadline in the Immigration and Nationality Act without an exception for changed or extraordinary circumstances, are the group DHS identified as most likely to be referred. A referral is not a denial. The applicant receives a Notice to Appear and presents the claim again before an immigration judge, this time in an adversarial hearing with a government lawyer on the other side.

Whether Charlotte actually shortens waits will turn on two things: how many officers USCIS assigns there, a figure we could not find published, and whether the court leaves the interview-skipping rule in place. The rule’s comment period closed Sept. 28, so a final version could follow.

This article is for general information and is not legal advice.

Sources: USCIS: USCIS Opens Asylum Office in Charlotte; Federal Register: Affirmative Asylum Referrals Without Interview, interim final rule (July 28, 2026); USCIS: USCIS Opens Asylum Office in Atlanta; Uno TV: USCIS abre oficina de asilo en Charlotte para Carolina del Norte y del Sur; Complaint, Immigration Equality v. Mullin, No. 1:26-cv-02921 (D.D.C., filed Aug. 19, 2026); Center for Gender & Refugee Studies: Immigration Equality et al. v. Mullin case page

About the Author

Vasanth Vaidyanathan, Esq.

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Vasanth Vaidyanathan is an immigration attorney with over 20 years of experience focused exclusively on U.S. immigration and nationality law. He holds a LL.M. from California Western School of Law, San Deigo and advises individuals and businesses on employment and family-based immigration matters, including H-1B, PERM, EB categories, and adjustment of status. He has also been a featured speaker at immigration seminars across the U.S. To reach Vasanth visit: https://www.vnathan.com/

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