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Immigration judges may reject an asylum or withholding of removal application without a full hearing on their own initiative, with no motion from the Department of Homeland Security, the Board of Immigration Appeals held in a precedent decision dated Sept. 29, 2026. Matter of G-R-B-, 30 I&N Dec. 102, removes the last procedural step that stood between a judge’s first read of an application and a summary denial, and it applies to every immigration court in the country.
The tool at issue is pretermission: a judge ends a claim before testimony because the application, read in the light most favorable to the applicant, does not state a prima facie case. A year ago, in Matter of H-A-A-V-, 29 I&N Dec. 233 (BIA 2025), the Board approved pretermission without an evidentiary hearing and declared its 1989 decision in Matter of Fefe, long read as guaranteeing applicants a chance to testify, no longer binding. In that case, though, DHS had asked for it with an oral motion at a master calendar hearing. G-R-B- answers the question that left open.
A race-based claim from Mexico, cut off by the judge
The respondent, a Mexican national, sought asylum, withholding and Convention Against Torture protection based on fear of private actors on account of race and a particular social group. An immigration judge pretermitted the asylum and withholding applications on May 5, 2026. On appeal he argued that the judge could not do so without a DHS motion and should have developed the record further.
The three-member panel, in an opinion by Deputy Chief Appellate Immigration Judge Gorman, rejected both points. Applicants carry the burden of proving eligibility, the Board wrote, and an agency “need not conduct a hearing where there is no genuine and substantial issue of fact in the record.” It added that the respondent had “not identified any legal authority” limiting a prima facie determination to cases where DHS moves first. On the merits, he alleged no past harm on account of race rising to persecution and pointed to no specific evidence of future persecution or torture. The Board treated his challenges to the untimeliness and social-group findings as waived.
Why the missing motion matters in practice
A DHS motion did more than start the process. It put the applicant on notice that the claim was under attack and gave a lawyer something to answer. Without that trigger, the first sign of trouble can be the judge’s ruling. The decision does not discuss advance notice; it says only that the respondent had the opportunity to submit evidence and explain his claims, which the statute guarantees.
The scale explains why this matters. TRAC at Syracuse University counted 2,278,978 cases with formal asylum applications in the immigration court backlog at the end of August 2026, and its data show judges denied 94.1 percent of asylum cases decided in June 2026. Letting judges screen applications without waiting for a government motion gives them a faster way through that docket.
For applicants, the practical effect is that the written Form I-589 now has to carry the whole case. A declaration that lists harms without tying them to a protected ground, or a social group left undefined until the merits hearing, can end the claim at the threshold. People without lawyers are most exposed; H-A-A-V- requires that a pro se applicant be put under oath to confirm the application is complete, a modest safeguard.
The first Trump administration tried to reach the same place by regulation. A December 2020 asylum rule would have let immigration judges pretermit applications without a hearing, but a federal judge in San Francisco blocked the entire rule on Jan. 8, 2021, in Pangea Legal Services v. DHS, citing the risk pretermission posed to legal service providers’ clients. The Board has now built the procedure through case law instead. The Center for Immigration Studies, which favors lower immigration, welcomed H-A-A-V- as letting judges quickly dispose of non-meritorious asylum claims.
The likely next fight is in the courts of appeals, framed as due process: whether a judge acting alone, with no motion and no stated notice, gives an applicant a meaningful chance to be heard. Because a respondent who loses at the Board can seek review in the circuit where the case was heard, circuits could set different floors, and a ruling that requires notice before pretermission would not need to strike down G-R-B- to blunt it.
This article is for general information and is not legal advice.
Sources: Matter of G-R-B-, 30 I&N Dec. 102 (BIA 2026); Matter of H-A-A-V-, 29 I&N Dec. 233 (BIA 2025); EOIR, AG/BIA precedent decisions, Volume 30; TRAC, Immigration Court Quick Facts (data through August 2026); TRAC, Asylum Denials Rise to 94% (Aug. 31, 2026); Justice Department, Dec. 10, 2020 release on the final asylum procedures rule; Pangea Legal Services v. DHS (N.D. Cal. Jan. 8, 2021); Center for Immigration Studies, BIA Allows Judges to Quickly Dispose of Non-Meritorious Asylum Claims.
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