Is the US asylum system too stingy and denies safe haven to those who clearly deserve it? Or is it too permissive, with thousands upon thousands of marginal claims swamping the bureaucracy?

The correct answer: both, as the remarkable case of Chinese asylum-seeker Guan Heng illustrates.

Guan’s case has been in the news recently largely thanks to the efforts of his supporters at the Human Rights in China NGO, who devoted a Substack post to it on December 12. Cutting a long story short, Guan bravely took it upon himself to take video of detention centers in Xinjiang province where the Communist government imprisoned Uyghurs during its notorious campaign of repression against that ethnic minority. That was in October 2020. In the summer of 2021 Guan left China, via Hong Kong, Ecuador, and the Bahamas, finally washing up on Florida’s coast in an inflatable boat in October. He made his way to New York and filed for asylum there, having meanwhile posted the video.

His family has faced repercussions in China, and he would likely face punishment if he returned.

Guan’s petition has been pending since October 21, 2025, though he had been granted a work permit and was boarding with a Chinese couple near Albany until August of this year. Then, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents came to the house, looking for the couple. Discovering Guan and determining that he had come to the country undocumented—“entry without inspection” in legal parlance—they jailed him without bail pursuant to a July 2025 Trump administration policy that requires detention of anyone ICE encounters who entered illegally.

At a December 15 hearing, an attorney for the Department of Homeland Security proposed that Guan be denied asylum and sent to Uganda, an East African country which recently agreed with the Trump administration to accept asylum seekers from the US. Uganda has close ties to China, however; it’s likely Guan would be denied asylum and extradited to his home country from there.

Guan’s predicament led to editorials in the Wall Street Journal and concern in Congress, where Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) sent a letter to Homeland Security secretary Kristi Noem demanding asylum for Guan.

The Trump administration has withdrawn its plan to send Guan to Uganda, but he still faces a Jan. 12 hearing on the question of whether he should be granted asylum or, if not, removed back to China.

It’s clear how the case shows the restrictive side of US policy, especially under the Trump administration. Previously, asylum seekers were not routinely detained, but Trump changed that because it’s easier to deport asylum seekers if they are in custody when their petitions are denied. It’s also a deterrent to seeking asylum in the first place. It was Guan’s bad luck to be boarding with people who were in ICE’s sights (for reasons that still aren’t clear) during Trump’s general crackdown on illegal immigration—and his worse luck to be home when they knocked on the door.

This is no way to treat someone who is entitled to at least a prompt decision on what is clearly a plausible claim for asylum. Assuming his story checks out, Guan meets the classic definition of a refugee, someone who is outside their home country and unwilling or unable to return due to a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on political opinion. He is not trying to get protection based on the squishiest basis in the law, which is fear of persecution because of membership in “a particular social group.”

And yet none of this would have happened if the US asylum system were not overloaded by people with less worthy claims, and hence incapable of functioning as it’s supposed to under federal law and regulations. Those rules say that applicants for asylum should receive a decision within 180 days of filing, which, in Guan’s case, should have been roughly April 2022. In practice, however, it can take several years even to get a hearing, as it has for Guan. These delays are self-perpetuating: the more people come and apply, the bigger the backlog, and the longer applicants can stay in the country and work—which is the goal for many if not most of them.

In the year during which Guan entered the US, fiscal 2022, United States Customs and Immigration Services received around 239,000 asylum applications, almost quadruple the number in fiscal 2021, 62,800. The inflow nearly doubled again in fiscal 2023, when USCIS received roughly 454,000 Form I-589 applications.  

No matter what your critique of the US asylum system, Guan’s case bolsters it. Accordingly, it bolsters the case for reforms that would ensure legitimate claims get expeditious action, while preventing and winnowing out meritless ones.