USA More Often Denies Asylum to Belarusians

According to data from ByAction volunteers, the deportation of Belarusians awaiting political asylum has become possible in the USA. The country of possible deportation is named as a country in Central America bordering Mexico and Guatemala — Belize. The initiative's volunteers are aware of at least two such cases, where cases were considered by one of the immigration judges in California.

As ByAction volunteers report, the individuals involved in these cases arrived in the USA more than two years ago, went through a legal immigration process, and were awaiting the review of their cases. The Belarusians were detained during random document checks (after vehicle stops).

According to Yauhen Zhdanovich, co-founder of the ByAction initiative, who draws conclusions from indirect evidence, the court did not consider the content of the asylum seekers' applications and decided to send them to a third country — Belize.

"We do not yet possess all the case materials. We are trying to find these individuals and the lawyers who represented the case in court to learn all the circumstances," explains Yauhen Zhdanovich.

According to Zhdanovich, ByAction has developed an analytical system that tracks all cases of Belarusian citizens in US immigration courts.

"We only work with materials that do not contain personal data, and we only see the dates of procedural events and the decisions made. According to our information, this is the first such decision, although it cannot be ruled out that we might have simply missed individual cases. It is probable that a new practice is now forming – sending emigrants seeking political asylum in the USA to third countries," suggests ByAction co-founder Yauhen Zhdanovich.

In December 2025 and January 2026, there were attempts to achieve the deportation to Uganda of some Belarusians who sought asylum in Pennsylvania, Hleb Ivashkevich, a member of the working group on migration issues, authorized by the representative of the United Transitional Cabinet for Social Policy, and a delegate of the 4th convocation of the Coordination Council from the "European Choice" faction, told "Svaboda".

"Prosecutors appealed to the court with separate petitions. A week later, they voluntarily withdrew their demands to deport people to Uganda, and the cases continued to be considered in the usual manner," he says.

Ivashkevich adds that one of the individuals involved in these cases awaited the immigration court and still received political asylum.

US immigration policy changed with the arrival of President Donald Trump to power. A number of humanitarian programs aimed at working with migrants were suspended. Control over the issuance of American visas was strengthened, requirements for labor migrants expanded, and the number of document checks during special raids by immigration police sharply increased.

All of this is happening amidst a sharp increase in the number of Belarusians trying to obtain political asylum in the USA.

According to the public organization OpenImmigration, which collects statistics on immigration case reviews from American courts in individual states, after 2020, the number of Belarusians seeking asylum in the USA has increased manifold. While 98 cases were reviewed across the USA in 2020, there were already 780 in 2021, and 939 in 2022.

Similarly, the number of cases involving Russian citizens increased, but the number of applications filed there is significantly higher — 7,007 in 2022 and 19,358 in 2023. Russians are denied asylum in the USA, according to the same statistics, almost three times more often than Belarusians.

According to OpenImmigration data, from 2000 to the first half of 2026, US authorities deported only 8 Belarusian citizens who attempted to seek asylum there. About a third of all "Belarusian" cases during this period concluded with asylum grants, others were reclassified, closed without deportation, or ended with denials to applicants.

Currently, more than two million cases of foreign citizens who have applied for asylum in the USA are pending in US immigration courts.

Among those who passed through US immigrant detention centers was Anatol Bokun, one of the leaders of the 2020 protests at "Belaruskali". He is currently free.

According to ByAction's analytical monitoring, the proportion of approved requests from Belarusians for political asylum in US immigration courts is decreasing. The organization's experts, citing their own sources, state that positive decisions significantly decreased in May, although denials were rather rare last winter.

Iryna Aksonchyk, an analyst with the ByAction initiative, told "Svaboda" that for the first half of 2026, the organization's volunteers have already recorded more denials than in all of 2025.

According to the expert, immigration courts in cases involving Belarusian citizens seeking asylum have begun to believe that the human rights situation in Belarus has improved.

"We are observing a stable trend of decreasing positive decisions by immigration courts regarding granting refugee status to Belarusian citizens in the USA," says Iryna Aksonchyk.

The expert adds that, according to her information, at least 78 Belarusian citizens were placed in detentions (US immigration prisons) in 2025. For comparison: in 2024, the ByAction initiative was aware of 13 such cases. For the first two months of 2026, 27 arrests of Belarusian citizens are known.

Individuals involved in such cases do not always want publicity, fearing problems in their homeland. As for public figures among them, the arrest and placement in an immigration prison of the well-known trade union leader, former "Belkaliy" employee Anatol Bokun, activist Artur Syanko, the family of Lev and Volha Babayeuski, and Veranika Kazlouskaya are known.

In response to a query from "Radio Svaboda", the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reported that it does not maintain separate statistics on Belarusian citizens and advised to use publicly available data from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

In turn, the Executive Office for Immigration Review reported that it does not track in its database the grounds on which applicants seek asylum.

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