Here's a story I think every asylum applicant in the U.S. needs to hear, because my client did almost everything by the book, and it still nearly cost him.
He'd filed for asylum within his first year in the U.S., as the law requires. He showed up to his biometrics appointment. He got his work permit. On paper, his case was moving exactly the way it's supposed to.
But asylum comes with a quiet cost that doesn't show up in any filing instructions: as long as your case is pending, leaving the U.S. means abandoning it. For this client, that meant years of not being able to visit family, building a life in a country where he often felt isolated, while a decision that would let him stay for good never seemed to arrive.
Eventually, he reached a breaking point. Relatives abroad were encouraging him to come join them, and he found an affordable path to continue his education overseas that simply wasn't available to him here. After weighing it carefully, he decided to leave the U.S. for good.
He did his homework before he left. He learned that if he wasn't going to pursue his asylum case, the responsible thing to do was withdraw it rather than just let it sit abandoned. So once he'd landed abroad, he wrote to the asylum office and formally withdrew his application.
What he didn’t find online is that USCIS currently follows a policy of referring cases to immigration court when an asylum application is withdrawn or denied and the applicant appears to be out of status. His withdrawal letter triggered exactly that. Weeks after he'd already left the country, the government filed a Notice to Appear with the immigration court, putting him into removal proceedings — for a hearing he'd have no way of knowing about unless he got lucky.
And he did, barely. A friend who still had access to his old mailing address happened to see the notices arrive and reached out to warn him, just before his hearing date. That’s when he called me.
He was right to be worried. Missing an immigration court hearing typically results in an automatic in-absentia removal order. If he'd never learned about the notice — or had assumed it didn't matter since he was already gone — that's almost certainly what would have happened. And a removal order follows a person: it would have made getting a U.S. visa for even a future business trip or family visit extraordinarily difficult.
At his hearing, I argued that the court did not have jurisdiction (authority) over my client because removal proceedings began after he had already left the United States for good. The judge didn't rule on that argument. Instead, he found something simpler: the Notice to Appear had been mailed to an address where my client no longer lived, meaning he'd never been properly served. The judge terminated the case on the spot.
My client got a good outcome. But it was close, and it didn't need to be. If he'd simply included proof of his departure — a flight itinerary, an entry stamp, anything — when he sent his withdrawal letter, this entire ordeal may well have been avoidable.
The takeaway: if you're withdrawing an immigration application after leaving the U.S., don't just say so — document it. Include evidence that you've actually departed. It could be the difference between quietly closing a chapter and getting pulled back into immigration court from thousands of miles away.
If you're facing a similar situation, or you're not sure how to safely close out a pending immigration case, our office at Monarch Immigration Law is glad to help you think it through before you make a move you can't take back.