On 25 September 2026, the United States Department of Justice issued an official response in the Federal Register (FR Doc. 2026-1942), rejecting 10 immigration-related petitions from the academic community, Congress, lawyers and the general public, making it clear that no new rule-making procedures would be initiated on the subject and that many immigration policy frameworks would remain unchanged, while releasing signals that regulation and enforcement would be strengthened in the area of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
The petition in question covered three core categories of claims, all rejected by the Ministry of Justice on clear grounds. The first is a request from the academic community for uniform rules on refugee definition: In May 2021, 100 law professors submitted a petition requesting uniform national rules of application on the elements of the refugee definition that “cannot or unwilling” to suffer persecution, avoiding standard differences in case decisions. In its response, the Ministry of Justice clarified that in 2025, the Minister of Justice had made a binding decision in the Matter of S-S-F-M case, confirming that the application of the law of the element of “failure or unwillingness” fell within the scope of a case-by-case decision, without the need to establish clear and uniform criteria through rules, which constituted a precedent in force and therefore rejected the petition. The second category concerns requests by counsel for rule-making in individual cases: In January 2022, counsel Jonathan M. Kaufman filed a petition requesting the Ministry of Justice to establish written rules under the William Wilberforce Protection of Victims of Human Trafficking Reauthorization Act 2008 (TVPRA) guaranteeing their clients access to decisions issued by immigration judges under the rules of the Act. The Ministry of Justice found the petition to be a case-by-case remedy which should be settled through an administrative decision or appeal procedure, rather than initiating a general rule-making process; it also disclosed that the rules relating to TVPRA had been placed on the unified agenda for the spring of 2025, registration number RIN 1125-AA70, and that the rule-making process would be initiated in due course and the request for additional rules of commencement was not accepted. The third category concerns requests by Congress for adjustments to the detention procedure: In October 2023, Senator Richard J. Durbin, Alex Padilla, a joint petition submitted by Congressman Jerrold Nadler, Pramila Jayapal, requested a revision of immigration detention procedures, including an adjustment of the burden of proof for bail hearings, the inclusion of the immigrant ' s ability to pay in the consideration of the amount of bail, the granting of a review of mandatory detention decisions, and the establishment of a mechanism for periodic evaluation of detained migrants to avoid excessive detention. In its response, the Ministry of Justice clarified that Executive Decree No. 14165 signed by the Trump Government in 2025, Securing Our Lords, had made it clear that the State policy “to detain migrants suspected of violating federal or state laws until they are expelled to the maximum extent permitted by law” and that the content of the petition was inconsistent with the policy direction of the current executive order and was therefore inadmissible.
The outcome of this petition ' s dismissal is directly related to the shift in the federal Government ' s immigration policy since 2025. Since the Trump Government took office, the immigration policy has been comprehensively tightened, and Executive Decree No. 14165 is the core policy basis for maximizing the use of detention rights, expediting deportation procedures, and any requests for regulatory adjustments involving the relaxation of immigration controls and lowering the detention threshold are in conflict with existing policies and therefore difficult to obtain support from the Ministry of Justice. The “unable or unwilling” criterion for the definition of a refugee was established in the A-B case in 2018 and reiterated by the Minister of Justice in his decision in 2025 that the Ministry of Justice considered that the existing case determination mechanism was sufficient to deal with the dispute and that no additional administrative resources were required to establish rules. The rule-making of TVPRA, although already on the agenda, has not yet entered the formal drafting stage, and the Ministry of Justice therefore does not accept the additional request to initiate the petition. In addition, the present response is a statutory act of the Ministry of Justice in accordance with the requirements of article 553 (e) of the Code of Administrative Procedure, which obliges the federal agencies to grant the public the right to petition for the establishment, amendment or annulment of rules, and is therefore essentially a procedural statutory feedback rather than a new policy of initiative.
The rejected petition does not address groups such as ordinary United States citizens, employers, homeowners, who are not directly affected, but are mainly affected by three categories of immigrant population: first, immigrants who are applying for refugee status, whose claims are still subject to review in accordance with the existing case-by-case criteria because the “unable or unwilling” criterion maintains the 2025 award, there are no new rules to adjust them, and the claims previously called for by the academic community to relax refugee determinations are not supported and the difficulty of applying is not reduced. The second concerns groups of migrants in detention, including migrants awaiting deportation proceedings, and migrants applying for bail. As the detention procedure maintains the existing framework, the burden of proof for bail hearings remains on the immigration side, the ability of migrants to pay will not be taken into account in the amount of bail, and there are no additional avenues for review of decisions on mandatory detention, and the risk of excessive detention increases. Thirdly, victims of human trafficking, especially unaccompanied children, are still being processed in accordance with existing administrative processes, as the rules relating to TVPRA have not yet been laid down, and there are no new written rules to safeguard their rights to resettlement, asylum applications, etc.
There are currently many migration policies in place, with no new entry points, and two core developments require attention by the parties concerned: The first is the development of rules relating to TVPRA, which the Ministry of Justice has placed on its consolidated agenda for the spring of 2025, and will follow up on whether the Ministry of Justice issues proposals for rules and the time for public comments, and if the rules are to be made, the public may submit comments as required. The second is the revision and enforcement of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA), a web-based study showing that the Ministry of Justice recently released signals that may finalize long-delayed revisions to the FARA rules, while strengthening enforcement against individuals suspected of acting on instructions from foreign Governments, including current or former United States public officials, if associated individuals or institutions are concerned with registration requirements to avoid irregularities. In the case of migrants in detention, there is still a need to follow existing administrative procedures and no new avenues of relief if they need to apply for bail or challenge compulsory detention; refugee applicants still need to prepare their applications in accordance with existing standards.