This Venezuelan family has won asylum. Days later they lost it.

Dyluis Rojas and his wife and children fled first from Venezuela and later from Colombia and Chile, crossing deserts, jungles and rivers with one goal: to reach the United States and stay there.

The family arrived in June 2022. Less than a year and a half later, they were elated when they received the news that their asylum application had been approved by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, one of the federal agencies that handles immigration cases. Mr. Rojas and his wife could soon start work. Eventually, they could apply for green cards.

A few days later another letter arrived, with the same date and signed by the same official. It stated that Mr Rojas’ asylum application was considered “not credible” and that he had not been granted asylum. The family was threatened with deportation.

“We were back to zero,” Mr. Rojas said.

It is unclear why two conflicting notices were issued and which one remains in effect. Immigration lawyers said Mr. Rojas’ situation appeared highly unusual, but that miscommunication by and within government agencies was not uncommon. Now the family waits again, unsure of their fate.

The conflicting letters shine a spotlight on a system that has been severely overwhelmed by the continued influx of migrants entering the United States.

Thousands of people are arriving by the day, their hopes pinned on a faltering immigration bureaucracy has received a record number of asylum applications in the past two years. There is now a backlog of two million asylum cases, according to data from USCIS and Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

Asylum applicants must file their claims within one year of arriving in the United States, but most migrants lack the knowledge and resources to do so. Applications are filed with two separate federal entities: USCIS, under the Department of Homeland Security, and the Immigration Court, which is part of the Department of Justice.

Asylum seekers can wait years before receiving a decision, with wait times and approval rates varying by U.S. region and the applicant’s nationality, among other factors. According to TRAC, the estimated average wait time for an asylum hearing in courts across the country is now 1,429 days.

At USCIS the processing time is approaching a decade.

A USCIS official said the agency does not comment on individual immigration cases. The official said USCIS evaluates each case fairly and humanely and devotes resources to reducing backlogs.

Understaffed government agencies play a constant game of playing catch-up and sometimes crossing wires, putting the lives of migrants like Mr. Rojas at risk.

The situation only threatens to get worse. Under President Biden, border crossings at the southern border have risen to record levels. The border police have apprehended as many as 10,000 people in one day in recent weeks. More than 160,000 migrants, many of them Venezuelan, have come to New York City since spring 2022, and about 70,000 remain in the city’s care.

The crisis has been a difficult test for New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has implored federal officials to ease the burden on major cities by providing more funding, but also by expediting work permits and helping more people seek asylum. one of the few routes to be able to work legally.

The city opened an asylum assistance center in June. As of last week, the city had helped migrants file more than 25,000 applications, including for temporary protected status, work permits and asylum; of these, more than 8,100 were asylum cases. It is unclear whether these people have been granted asylum.

Anecdotally, immigration attorneys say some migrants who arrived in New York in the past two years have received decisions on their asylum cases, but the vast majority of those cases are still pending.

The lengthy timeline was one reason why Mr. Rojas and his wife, Grisy Oropeza, were surprised and overjoyed when they received a notice of approval just four months after they applied.

“There were no words,” Mr. Rojas recently recalled of the day he received the news. “We were in shock.”

a TV news crew included while someone from a community group explained the meaning of the letter. Mr. Rojas and Ms. Oropeza wiped away tears.

“The dream starts today,” Ana Maldonado-Alfonzo, the paralegal who helped them with the application, said at the time.

Mr. Rojas’ asylum application said officials under Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro had tried to extort money from the small store he and his wife ran out of their home. In his filing, Mr. Rojas said he was beaten and jailed when he refused to pay, and continued to receive death threats after his release.

Eventually, after trying to make a living in Colombia and Chile, where they say they faced xenophobia, the family, including a five-month-old baby, embarked on a months-long journey to the United States. They didn’t have an exact destination in mind, but they had heard a lot about New York and knew someone there. Officials bused them from the border to Washington, Mr. Rojas said, and from there they headed north.

Desperate for work, they applied for asylum in June 2023.

“To arrive here, get a job, have a steady relationship with the children and have a better life for them – that was the hope,” Ms Oropeza said.

Once in a family shelter in Brooklyn, they began to create some stability. The older children went to school, where bilingual teachers and Spanish-speaking friends helped them acclimatize. They survived their first winter with donated clothing.

In October they received the message of asylum approval. Then came the rejection letter. In November, the family was transferred without explanation to a shelter in a hotel in Queens, more than an hour’s journey to the children’s school in Brooklyn.

The family will appear in immigration court this week, a move that ManoLasya Perepa, government relations policy advisor at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, called “a colossal waste of time.”

“Whoever made the initial findings that they had been granted asylum believed that the family met their burden of proof under the law,” she said.

Ms Perepa said “inefficiencies, mismanagement and redundancies” such as those that appear to have occurred in this case are what make the immigration system “so slow and unfair.”

Jose Perez, an immigration lawyer who is representing Mr. Rojas and his family for free, said the best outcome would be for their lawsuit to be dismissed and for USCIS to make a final decision on the original asylum application. Otherwise, the family could remain in limbo for years.

Ms. Oropeza said she felt like a dream was taken away in an instant. “You have to go through so much to get here,” she said. “To come here and not know your destiny, to still be on that journey – it’s depressing.”