Lawyers defending illegal immigrants may be the next target of the Trump administration’s war on fraud. The Trump administration is instructing ICE attorneys to scrutinize immigration attorneys it says “frequently coach” illegal immigrants “to conceal their past and even outright lie in their asylum claims,” the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said Tuesday. “For many years, millions of illegal aliens have committed fraud in our immigration system. No place is this more rampant than in immigration court,” Homeland Security General Counsel James Percival said in a statement. Foreigners apply for asylum once they reach United States soil and must prove that they’re victims of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group in their home country to receive protection. “Protection claims like asylum are intended to cover unique and narrow circumstances, but it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country,” Percival said. “Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools. Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys,” he added. As part of its mass deportation effort, the Trump administration has made sweeping changes to the immigration court system. The Justice Department swore in 82 immigration judges — the largest class in agency history — bringing total fiscal year 2026 hires to 153, the most in any single year. Now, the United States has nearly 700 immigration judges. The hiring blitz followed a mass firing of more than 100 immigration judges who granted asylum in 46% of cases, according to The New York Times. The federal government also recently issued a new rule to force green card applicants to return to their home countries to apply for permanent residency. In many instances, foreigners in the United States on temporary visas may remain and await a decision on their applications. The Trump administration has said that the previous rule resulted in individuals who were ultimately denied a green card staying and increasing the illegal immigrant population. When those illegal immigrants failed to ultimately leave the country, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had to hunt them down. As of September 2024, roughly 500,000 immigrants had overstayed their visas, according to Homeland Security data. It’s not clear how many of them had previously applied for green cards.