Jean Yameogo used to meet friends after work to drink tea and talk politics.
One day, he says, someone reported him for expressing a negative opinion about the government of Burkina Faso to members of a pro-government group.
Soon after, Yameogo says the group began threatening him. They came to his interior design shop in Ouagdougu, where he employed three people, and destroyed equipment he used for welding and carpentry and materials for sewing and upholstery. Later, he says, they burned his car.
“I was scared,” Yameogo says. “I was scared about my life, my family’s life, too.”
The threats came amid a broader climate of fear. He says friends had been forced to join the military to fight terrorists after openly criticizing the government.
So Yameogo came to the United States on a tourist visa with his wife, Coulibaly, and 3-year-old son, and applied for asylum on Dec. 11, 2024. His wife later returned to Burkina Faso while she was pregnant to visit relatives. While there, the same men who had targeted him came to their home and assaulted her, he says, and she lost the baby.
Now, Yameogo and his family are living in Cicero while he waits for the United States government to decide his asylum case. Asylum applicants normally can apply for a temporary work permit and get one after about six months while their case makes its way through the courts. But Yameogo has been unable to get a work permit.
He has applied for work authorization multiple times, but his applications have been denied. Shelly Schulze, a spokesperson for Refugee One, a not-for-profit agency helping him with his case, says it’s not certain why his applications were denied but that the problem seems to have started with a missed appointment with immigration officials. Yameogo didn’t get the notice because his family had moved.
Not having an updated address appears to have become a months-long barrier in a backlogged system that can be tough to navigate without legal help.
Without a work permit, Yameogo says he’s struggled to provide for his family financially.
He’s not alone. Advocates for immigrants say Trump administration policies targeting work authorization are pushing immigrants out of the legal workforce. These include pauses on work-permit applications from 39 countries deemed “high risk,” the end of automatic work-permit extensions, slower processing times for permit applications and a proposed rule that would make it harder for asylum-seekers to get work permits.
This is part of a broader effort, advocates say, to narrow legal pathways for immigrants and pressure them to voluntarily self-deport.
The effects, some economists say, could go beyond immigrant workers and their families, rippling through businesses, employers and local government when workers lose income or are pushed into off-the-books jobs.
Conchita Cruz, co-executive director of the Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, says some immigrants are struggling to get permission to work in the first place, and others risk losing that permission while renewing work permits they already had.
“Immigrant workers with legal immigration status are falling out of the authorized workforce,” she says.
No more automatic renewals
In October, a rule took effect that removed a safeguard that had allowed eligible workers to stay on the job while U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services processed their work-permit renewal.
Before, many workers who applied to renew on time could keep working for up to 540 days while the federal agency processed the new card. Now, Cruz says, many no longer get that extension. If their old permit expires before the new one arrives, workers might have to stop working even if they filed on time.
A USCIS spokesperson says the agency is putting a new emphasis on “robust alien screening and vetting” before extending work authorization.
The October rule applies to applicants across multiple immigration categories, including some asylum applicants and people with Temporary Protected Status. It does not apply to lawful permanent residents, who can work with a green card.
A lawsuit challenging the rule is making its way through the courts.
A shadow labor market
Economists say the policy could lead to lost wages, reduced spending, increased hiring costs and labor shortages.
In Illinois, Attorney General Kwame Raoul’s office says the rule puts up to 100,000 people at risk of losing their jobs. Raoul’s office joined a coalition of attorneys general in submitting formal comments to the federal Department of Homeland Security opposing the rule.
“In the coming year, hundreds of thousands of immigrant workers, including asylum-seekers, will feel the consequences of the government’s rash and illegal move to eliminate automatic work-permit extensions,” Cruz says.
Advocates and economists say cutting off work authorization can push people out of stable, legal jobs into a shadow labor market with lower pay and weaker labor protections.
In Chicago, Enrique Espinoza, a staff attorney with the Chicago-Kent College of Law immigration clinic, says some of his clients have considered leaving the United States because they can’t support themselves while they wait, even if returning to their former countries could put them at risk.
“I feel like the government is really pushing the envelope to put more pressure on those individuals that are just trying to abide by the law,” Espinoza says.
If someone’s work permit expires before the renewal arrives, businesses might have to replace people they already have trained, Espinoza says.
“They will have to hire new individuals,” he says. “It’s going to be more costly. They need to retrain these new employees.”
Backlogs, slow processing
The work-permit rule has led to a backlog and longer wait times for all sorts of work-permit applications, advocates say.
Felix Diaz, a longtime Cicero resident from Mexico, says she has relied for years on a work permit tied to a federal Violence Against Women Act petition after surviving domestic violence. She says she has renewed that permit for more than a decade, but her latest renewal, which she applied for in July 2025, hasn’t arrived even though she got a USCIS notice saying the application was received.
Her current work permit is set to expire in August. If the new card does not arrive in time, she worries that the business where she works caring for elderly people might take her off its schedule temporarily or even fire her until she can show once again that she has valid work authorization.
Diaz says she shares rent and household expenses with her adult children, but losing her own paycheck would still threaten her independence and add pressure to a household already dealing with high rent and other costs of living.
“I’m worried and stressed,” she says.
If her employer asks for updated paperwork and she does not have the new permit, she worries that “they are going to lay me off, they are going to fire me.”
In February, the Trump administration proposed a rule that would effectively eliminate work permits for most asylum applicants, including Jean Yameogo. If the rule is implemented, it would prevent asylum applicants from working legally while they wait for a judge to decide their case.
Yameogo has an immigration court hearing set for September. He is seeking “defensive asylum,” which applies when a person is in removal proceedings and asks a judge for asylum to avoid deportation.
No matter what happens, he says he cannot go back to Burkina Faso.
“No, no, never,” he says. “The situation is not good.”
Yamego came to the United States seeking safety. But, without a work permit, safety has not brought stability.
To make money, his wife braids hair when she can. Yamego picks up construction, painting and other small jobs when they come.
For now, he has refuge from the danger he fled but not the work permit he needs to build a life beyond survival.