New migrants have one year to apply for asylum. Many will not make it.

Santos Lopez uprooted his family and walked nearly 2,000 miles last spring on a perilous trek from Honduras to the United States to escape a violent gang that was extorting him. The group demanded a monthly payment, he said, to allow him to run his car shop in peace.

Like many others, Mr. Lopez and his family hoped their experience would convince their adopted country to grant them asylum, which is granted to those who face a “credible fear of persecution in their country of origin”. A grant of asylum would allow them to work and eventually apply for a green card and citizenship.

But more than a year after his family — including his wife and two daughters — arrived safely at the southern border, it seems likely they missed the application deadline. Mr Lopez, 42, said he sought help from a lawyer.

Mr. Lopez and his family are among the millions of migrants who have arrived at the southern border in the past year. Many, after telling border agents about abuses and persecution they have experienced, a first step in the long and complicated asylum-seeking process, have been temporarily released while they wait for their immigration cases to wind through the courts.

But even as migrants have applied for asylum in record numbers, lawyers and immigration lawyers say that without additional legal support, many – perhaps the majority – will miss their application deadline and fall into a more dangerous category of immigrants: the undocumented.

“Our immigration system is broken,” he said Henry love, vice president of policy and advocacy at Win, which operates 14 family shelters and has a contract with New York City to house migrant families.

“There will be so many people who won’t get the chance to apply for asylum because of the logistical complications of it,” he said, adding, “I got a PhD and there’s no way I could.”

As migrants have spread across the United States, many immigrant leaders and advocates are beginning to refer to the newcomers as asylum seekers, not just immigrants. In the fiscal year that ended in September, a record 250,000 asylum applications were filed nationwide, raising the total number of pending applications to nearly 1.6 million, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

New York City has become the top destination for newly arrived migrants. Between March and May of this year, nearly 39,000 new immigration cases were filed in New York City, compared to about 11,000 in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and about 16,000 in Los Angeles County, according to clearinghouse data.

As of June 25, more than 81,200 migrants had arrived in New York since last spring, and 50,000 are housed in city shelters, according to city data.

Migrants seeking asylum generally have 12 months to submit their completed application, though many, such as the Lopez family, are unsure of the timeline. If people don’t submit their applications on time, it could jeopardize the new life they were building in their adopted cities.

People who formally apply for asylum are allowed to stay in the country to await a decision in their case, and so are asylum seekers Apply for temporary work authorization 150 days after successfully submitting their application.

Many newcomers to New York, frustrated with waiting to obtain work permits, have sought work in the underground economy and joined the existing pool of undocumented workers. But without proper documentation, they remain vulnerable to deportation and exploitation.

Asylum seekers do not meet their application deadline for various reasons.

The application itself can be incredibly difficult: it is 12 pages long, in English, and includes questions such as the last five addresses where the applicant lived, the names and addresses of relatives, and a section to explain – in detail – what damage or mistreatment they have had to deal with. Missing one question may result in a request being returned.

Just knowing where to apply is complicated and depends on the specific details of each new entrant’s case.

In addition, newcomers must quickly interact with the immigration justice system to avoid immediate deportation. But they often find that critical immigration documents have been sent to incorrect addresses, meaning they miss important court hearings, putting them at risk of deportation. Some new arrivals have also reported receiving first court hearing dates well past the deadline to apply for asylum.

They have to do all of this through a backlog of justice, which can make the process more complicated and time consuming. And many migrants navigate the process solely because of a shortage of immigration attorneys and lawyers.

Jodi Ziesemer, director of the New York Legal Assistance Group’s immigrant protection unit, said that even for those who regularly practice immigration law, the administrative complexities can be confusing.

“Even when you start submitting the application, it can be unclear where you need to submit it to be accepted,” she said.

But the most important persistent problem is that many asylum seekers are unaware — and often not told by officials — that they are working against a time clock to submit their applications, lawyers say.

Under normal circumstances, it can take six or seven years for cases to be tried. Ms. Ziesemer said the current strain on the already struggling immigration justice system will inevitably prolong cases even further.

It may soon become “unsustainable” for the courts to clear the growing backlog of cases the way they operate now, she said.

Christine C. Quinn, the president and chief executive of Win, said her organization’s staff were surprised to learn that many of the families in their shelters had an asylum application deadline ahead of them.

“What happens when we have tons of these shelters where we know the vast majority, probably 95 to 98 percent, haven’t really started the application process for which they qualify?” said Mr. Love. “All these people will be timed out.”

Win works together with legal aid lawyers and has set up an application clinic. The organization’s staff identified families approaching or past the one-year deadline and provided transportation to meet with attorneys. The group was able to obtain legal aid for 25 families.

“I’m sympathetic to the fact that the mayor and the city were blindsided by this,” Ms Quinn said in May, adding: “But now I think we really should be in a different place than where we are now.”

In June, Mayor Eric Adams announced the creation of the Help Center for Asylum Applications which brings together immigration legal services and pro bono lawyers and aims to help thousands of asylum seekers by the end of the summer.

Lawyers at the center will help asylum seekers complete and submit their applications, but will not represent clients during the court proceedings.

While the city helps migrants, the stream of new arrivals continues.

Ruthmary Murillo, 23, originally from Venezuela, came to the United States from Colombia last September with her husband, Diego, and their two young children. Ms Murillo said her family plans to apply for asylum, but have not started the process yet.

“When I came I knew nothing,” she said, adding, “In the shelter we didn’t find out anything.”

Her family is now affiliated an aid center at the Good Shepherd Lutheran Churchin Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, she said.

“They helped us get our bearings,” Ms. Murillo said. “Now we know a little more about what to do.”