The mother of four did not always plan to come to the United States but, after testifying against a family member who was selling drugs, moving hundreds of miles away from Costa Rica became the safest option.
“This country is very far,” the mother said through an interpreter, “And I don’t think these people are gonna find me there. I felt myself safe coming here.”
She and her kids received temporary legal status through the Biden-era humanitarian parole program called “Processes for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans.” She was eligible for the parole program because she is originally Nicaraguan. But when the Trump administration ended the program in 2025, the family lost its legal status.
Now, they’re fighting for asylum, one of the only legal avenues left that could allow them to stay in the U.S. legally, protect them from deportation and offer some kind of path to citizenship. KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom are not using the woman or her children’s names because they fear possible deportation.
“It’s very hard for us because we come from our countries not because we want to; it’s because we really need to be here,” she said.
The family is among thousands of asylum seekers who face an uphill battle in Kansas City Immigration Court. The court, which hears immigration cases from throughout Missouri and Kansas, is notorious for denying asylum claims at a high rate.
So far in the 2026 fiscal year, judges in Kansas City Immigration Court have denied 95% of all asylum cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, a data research organization at Syracuse University.
Despite the threat of retaliatory violence in Costa Rica, the mother faces hurdles in proving she has a “well-founded fear” of returning home — the standard required by immigration law.
Asylum is a form of protection granted to people who come to the U.S. without legal status and who meet the legal definition of a refugee, according to the American Immigration Council. People seeking asylum must prove they suffered persecution in their home country because they are a member of a protected class, and that they could be persecuted again if they return.
In fiscal year 2025, immigration judges denied 71% of all asylum cases nationwide, TRAC data shows — an increase from 2024, when the denial rate was 50%.
“Since this person has been president,” she said, referring to President Donald Trump, “He has been changing one thing and another. So it has been very hard.”
Kansas City immigration attorney Genevra Alberti, who is not involved in the mother’s case, said the Trump administration has been going after the asylum system nonstop.
“All sides are doing everything possible to dismantle the system,” Alberti said, adding some people have waited years for their asylum trial. “And then all of a sudden, the rug is being swept out from under them.”
Inside immigration court
If the woman from Costa Rica and her family have their day in court, they will ride an elevator to the fifth floor of a nondescript, high-rise office building in downtown Kansas City and enter one of three courtrooms situated down a long hallway. On any given day, asylum seekers sit anxiously in the waiting room for their hearing time to come.
Since Trump intensified deportation efforts last year, the small courtroom has seen constant activity. According to TRAC, the backlog of cases in Kansas City’s immigration court has grown in the past 10 years. In 2016, the backlog was at 4,989 cases. In 2021, that backlog skyrocketed to 18,225. Since 2024, the backlog has hovered around 50,000 cases.
A hearing here might be the first time someone is in court for removal proceedings, and judges often oversee initial removal hearings in groups of about a dozen cases at a time. Some defendants come to the courtroom with their spouses and children.
For people whose primary language is not English, a virtual or in-person interpreter is provided. Most of the people going through Kansas City Immigration Court come from Latin American countries, according to TRAC. About 21% of the people in the court’s backlog are from Mexico, followed by Honduras, Venezuela, Guatemala and Colombia.
The proceedings follow a pattern: The judge tells the defendant they are in court because they violated U.S. immigration law when they entered the country illegally, and the government has put them in removal proceedings.
Most defendants do not have a lawyer this early in the process, and many ask the judge for more time to find an attorney. But because being in the U.S. without proper authorization is a civil violation, immigrants in removal proceedings are not protected under the Sixth Amendment, which guarantees the right to legal representation. They must find one, and pay for them, on their own.
Before the hearing ends, the judge tells nearly every defendant they can apply for asylum. The application must be filled out in English and costs $102 to submit.
People who apply for asylum can do so through two avenues: via immigration court or through U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services application, Form I-589, asks detailed questions, like: “Do you fear harm or mistreatment if you return to your home country?” If the answer if yes, the applicant must explain in detail:
- What harm or mistreatment you fear
- Who you believe would harm or mistreat you
- Why you believe you would or could be harmed or mistreated
Proving persecution because someone is a member of the eligible groups can be particularly difficult, said Alberti, because it is up to the judge’s interpretation.
“You’re dealing with people (clients) who are traumatized for the most part, and who may have memory issues because of that, and you’re holding them to this incredibly high standard of having perfect memory — which none of us have,” Alberti said. “Some judges will use that against them.”
Many of the people in immigration court have no criminal record, but have lived in the U.S. for more than a year, which makes it even more difficult to win asylum. Some who have been detained by federal agents for violating immigration laws are now fighting their asylum claims from detention facilities.
“If these folks are traumatized already and they are stuck in custody, having to try to make a case for asylum is so incredibly difficult,” Alberti said.
'A second opportunity'
The woman who shared her story with KCUR and The Midwest Newsroom still has a clear memory of the day that upended her life in Costa Rica.
She had recently taken a relative to court because the relative was buying and selling drugs. Later, as she made her way home from work, she was ambushed by three men — one pointing a gun at her head. As her relative stood by watching, the gunman pulled the trigger. But the gun didn’t fire.
She ran into a nearby store for shelter, but her daughter, who had been hiding behind a car during the attack, recorded everything on a cellphone before escaping to another relative’s home.
“When I think about that, I think that God gave me a second opportunity,” the mother said.
After that, the family was placed under witness protection in Costa Rica, but the mother’s mental health deteriorated over her safety concerns. When she heard about the humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans in 2023, she reached out to Andrea Sears, an American woman she knew.
Sears and her husband lived in Costa Rica for 13 years and ran a nonprofit organization for adults looking for work. The mother met Sears through participating in the nonprofit, where she received training as a legal assistant.
“She's a very motivated person who really wants to get equipped and trained so that she can have a career, and these life circumstances just keep getting in the way of her being able to do that,” Sears said.
In 2022, Sears moved back to the U.S. When the Costa Rican mother asked her about the CHNV parole program, Sears found she could be her sponsor. Though the mother was living in Costa Rica at the time, she was eligible for the parole program because she is Nicaraguan. So Sears completed the lengthy application for the mother and her children to come to the U.S.
“I was so happy, even walking in the street. I could feel I was laughing in the street and feeling the wind in my face and smiling,” the mother said, recalling when she received approval to come to the U.S. under humanitarian parole. “I called my mom very happy, and I told her, ‘Mom, guess what? I already received the formal invitation to go to the U.S.’”
Little help for asylum seekers
In the Kansas City metro area, the nonprofit Asylum Clinic KC is one of the only groups that helps people with asylum applications, but its capacity is limited, said Executive Director Clare Murphy Shaw.
“There’s a giant need for expert assistance and not enough attorneys doing the work — and not enough attorneys who are available pro bono,” Shaw said.
“The form itself asks some questions that are just really hard to understand if you don’t have a legal background and, if you answer them incorrectly, they can be considered to be a misrepresentation of your case,” Shaw said. “It needs to be really filled out, really accurately, really carefully, and a level of specificity that a lot of people don’t realize.”
While Form I-589 hasn’t changed much over the years for asylum seekers, the current status of the law behind it has. The increasingly narrow view in which judges are determining asylum cases means applications are heavily scrutinized.
“The government is finding ways to read the law more and more narrowly to make it so that fewer and fewer people actually qualify,” Shaw said.
Asylum applications that go through immigration courts, and not through Citizenship and Immigration Services, are considered defensive asylum cases, because they become an immigrant’s defense from being removed from the U.S.
Since the Trump administration increased detention and deportation of people without legal status in the U.S., many more people are hanging onto a defensive asylum case as their last hope. A December 2025 congressional report showed there were more than 2.4 million pending asylum applications at the end of that fiscal year.
Asylum Clinic KC helps about 400 clients each year, Shaw said, but constant policy changes from the Trump administration mean the organization must reassess and reinvent its work constantly. A pilot project at Asylum Clinic KC is currently focused on children and people who qualify for human trafficking visas.
“Asylum is a right way under the law to seek protection, and we’ve made international commitments to protect asylum seekers that, in my opinion, we need to honor as a country,” Shaw said.
Immigration attorney Danielle Moncayo Wingfield began practicing immigration law just weeks before Trump took office in 2017, and she’s ridden the constant waves of change since then. In 2022, she opened her own immigration law firm.
“In Kansas City, it’s always been bad,” she said. “It’s never been an easy feat, and so I feel like it hasn’t changed a whole lot. The judges are still pretty much denying the vast majority of the asylum cases.”
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has taken great strides to restrict who can be granted asylum, so applicants now find themselves in a precarious position — without legal status and vulnerable to ramped-up immigration enforcement across the country.
The result for the mother who shared her story for this report is that she rarely leaves her house.
On a quiet, sunny afternoon in March, with two of her kids at work and two at school, a service dog kept her company — her youngest has a heart condition that requires constant medical care, and the financial burden falls to her two oldest.
“I haven’t been able to sleep well,” she said.
Her family applied for asylum in early 2025 before losing their temporary protected status, and the process is ongoing.
The mother’s work permit was also revoked — an administrative error that has cost more than $1,000 for her to appeal and reinstate, a process that is still pending.
Policy shifts
After an immigration judge rules in a case, the defendant or the attorney representing the federal government can appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, an administrative court with the power to shape and interpret immigration case law.
An NPR analysis in March found that the appeals court’s decisions “significantly narrow the due process and relief from deportation available for immigrants.”
Last year, the Board of Immigration Appeals published 70 decisions, the single-highest yearly total since 2009, according to NPR. In the cases that came before the body last year, the government won 97% of the time.
Another shift in policy threatens to send asylum seekers to countries they are not from. By using a tool called “pretermission,” the government can move to end asylum proceedings in immigration court, according to immigration data and analysis website bklg.
The Trump administration has entered into third-country deportation agreements with 27 countries, according to the Migration Policy Institute, including with nations like Uganda, Honduras, Guatemala and Ecuador.
And reporting by Politico in October showed the Board of Immigration Appeals said judges should consider removal to a third country before someone’s asylum case is considered in the U.S.
“Some of them have established lives here, have children here, and now they’re suddenly being told they have to leave, to go somewhere else to try for asylum,” Alberti said.
The policy shift also has financial ramifications for asylum seekers because attorneys have to prepare an additional argument to defend clients from being removed to another country.
As an example, according to bklg, if a person cannot prove they would be persecuted by being removed to another country that has an agreement with the U.S., a judge may rule that they would be ineligible for asylum in the U.S.
“They’ve paid to file the asylum application, they’ve paid to go to hearings,” Alberti said. “Now that money’s gone down the drain because you’re not going to have your chance to tell your story at a final trial.”
‘I will feel peace’
Earlier this year, the mother took her youngest child to the Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Kansas City’s Northland for a routine appointment to collect fingerprints, a photo and a signature. Her child, who the appointment was for, was full of energy, spent a little time jumping and running around the parking lot.
The mother was nervous over reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had been detaining people at appointments like these, so, for added security and comfort, she asked a friend to accompany them.
“I’m also afraid, because I know that if I go back to my country again, I’m going to be in danger,” she said.
The appointment was short and without incident, but the threat of encountering ICE agents loomed over the mother. The stress has forced her to think about going back to Costa Rica, but leaving the U.S. before their cases are adjudicated would put her children’s chances in jeopardy.
She’s also exploring asylum in Canada but can’t do that until her asylum case in the U.S. reaches a decision, and she worries a denial here would result in immediate deportation.
“I try to stay strong for my children and try not to pass on all these thoughts,” she said. “Every day, I wake up and think about that, and I really am terrified.”
Still, she hopes against all odds her family will be granted asylum in the U.S. It would mean stability for her family, she said, and an opportunity for her children to pursue a better life and education.
“I will feel peace,” she said. “I will feel calm.”
The Midwest Newsroom is an investigative and enterprise journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR. There are many ways you can contact us with story ideas and leads, and you can find that information here. The Midwest Newsroom is a partner of The Trust Project. We invite you to review our ethics and practices here.
METHODOLOGY
Reporter Celisa Calacal analyzed data collected by Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse looking at asylum denial rates in Kansas City Immigration Court. She also interviewed several immigration attorneys and immigration advocates to better understand how the asylum process works and the obstacles that immigrants can face in the asylum process. She also met and interviewed a woman currently seeking asylum in the U.S. To provide context to the outcomes in the Kansas City court, Daniel Wheaton included data from the two nearest courts — Omaha and Chicago — were added to the data visualizations, as well as the nation’s largest courts: New York, Miami and San Francisco.
REFERENCES
An immigration court few have heard of is quietly shaping policy behind the scenes (NPR | March 20, 2026)
DOJ Moves to End Administrative Immigration Appeals to Speed Up Mass Deportations
(American Immigration Council | February 13, 2026)
The Trump administration's plan to close a 'huge loophole' in legal immigration (Politico | December 29, 2025)
Biometrics Appointments for Fingerprints (Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project | April 14, 2026)
Immigration Court Backlog (Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse | March 2026)
Asylum in the United States (American Immigration Council | May 9, 2025)
The Biden Administration’s Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans: An Overview (American Immigration Council | July 1, 2025)
TYPE OF ARTICLE
News — Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
