Step by step for paying your annual fee (for Asylum Seekers in Court)

本站添加: 2026-05-21

[00:00:03]Hi, I wanted to do a video about the asylum annual fee and asylum initial fee for people who are pending before the immigration court. Um, and this video is specifically for people who are pending before the immigration court and not people pending before the asylum office.

[00:00:16]This video will be followed by a tutorial on um on screen that will show you how to do that payment. But quickly before we go ahead and show you the tutorial, I want to point a couple of things for you so you can understand.

[00:00:27]Please understand that there's two kinds of fees that are involved for people who are fighting for asylum in court. And those two fees are the initial fee, which is $100, and the annual asylum fee, or better known as AAF, that is 102, currently $102.

[00:00:42]Now, the asylum and the annual asylum fee is going to grow um every year with inflation. So, next year it's going to be a different amount, but as of now, as of the recording of this video, which is in May of 2026, um it's $102.

[00:00:57]Now, who pays the initial asylum fee?

[00:01:00]Again, these for people who are in immigration court and not in the USCIS office or the asylum office. Anybody who filed an asylum application after July 4th, 2025, must pay $100 when they are filing this application.

[00:01:18]Now, in the beginning, if you remember when this rule was uh set, it was done in such a chaotic way that for almost a couple of months we had no way of even paying that amount of money. And what ended up happening is that judges were okay with you not paying that amount.

[00:01:34]But, if your asylum application was filed after July 4th, 2025, you should have paid the $100 initial fee.

[00:01:44]Who doesn't pay that fee? It's the people who had a pending asylum application before July 4th, 2025. So, for example, if you're somebody who came to the United States, crossed the border sometime in 2023, And you were given a notice to appear, a document that sends you to immigration court.

[00:02:03]And in that document you had a court date, and you went to the court, and your attorney or you filed an asylum case, some some asylum application, sorry, sometime in end of 2023.

[00:02:14]You don't have to pay the $100 fee.

[00:02:16]That's for the initial asylum application.

[00:02:20]Let me give you another scenario that is a little bit different. Let's say you also crossed the borders in 20 23.

[00:02:26]Let's say that you um tried to see if you had a court date, but your notice to appear, which is the court document, did not give you a specific date to or to go to court, or your court date was canceled. So, you did not file an asylum application with the immigration court.

[00:02:42]Instead, you filed it at that point, for example, with the asylum office. And it remained pending with the asylum office, and then sometime in 2025 you got a letter from the asylum office saying, "Hey, you should not be in the asylum office. You should be in immigration court." We're sending you back to immigration court. If you have gone to immigration court after that letter, and filed your asylum application after that, even though you had filed it initially with the asylum office before July 4th, 2025. But if you filed it after July 4th, 2025, you're going to have to pay the $100 initial fee. So, this is for the initial fee. Okay?

[00:03:19]Now, let's talk about the annual fee.

[00:03:21]The annual fee, which is 102 currently, and I like I said, it's going to keep changing with inflation, is for any application that was pending for more than a year. So, for example, let's say you filed your asylum application on August 1st, 2025.

[00:03:36]And because you filed after July 4th, 2025, you're going to pay the $100 initial fee. Let's say your application was not adjudicated or decided upon until couple of years. It means that every August 1st, August 1st, 2026, August 1st, 2027, August 1st 2028, you have to pay that asylum annual fee of $102 or whatever the amount is at that time. Now, that's is going to create a lot of confusion. People are going to be very confused about whether to pay the asylum fee when um and when is the anniversary of their case and all of that. So, I'm thinking that the perhaps one of the best ways to deal with this issue is to set a date per year and pay the $102 on that day or whatever the amount is.

[00:04:21]So, I for my clients I'm choosing October 15th. And the reason I'm choosing October 15th is that's the day it's after the uh fiscal year starts.

[00:04:30]Fiscal year starts on October 1st.

[00:04:32]And so, after the fiscal year starts, what we do is we're going to have our clients, we're going to blitz them and we're going to say, "Hey, everybody pay your annual asylum fee." That way, every October 15th, there'll be at least one fee already been paid and we will know 100% that you are covered with that amount. Now, stay tuned as I go through the website, show you how to go and pay that amount.

[00:04:57]In this part of the video, we're going to be talking about how to make the annual asylum fee payment on the EOR court immigration court portal. Once you open your browser, you're going to be able to reach the website to do the payments through one of three methods.

[00:05:12]The first method is to simply go and do a Google search for EOR payment portal.

[00:05:26]You'll see that it's usually the first website. You'll open it. You'll see the seal of the Department of Justice right here and here. And that's an indicator that you have reached the website.

[00:05:36]You'll see the words EOR payment portal up here.

[00:05:40]Another way is to look at the links that we have at the bottom of the video the And in those links, you'll find also one of them that will take you directly to the EIOR payment portal.

[00:05:52]And then the third and the final way is to type in the address of the payment portal.

[00:05:58]The address is epay.eoir.justice.gov/index.

[00:06:05]You can screenshot this part of the video so you can keep the address.

[00:06:09]Once I open it, I'll see that there's a disclaimer warning me that this computer is accessing government computers and there's no expectations of privacy and the information will be collected and saved by the US government and that it should not be used for improper use or for criminal activities. I'm going to say yes, I accept that.

[00:06:29]And now I'm on the main website about the EIOR payment portal.

[00:06:33]Now remember, we're here to pay the annual asylum fee.

[00:06:38]So we have to go to the drop-down menu that's here and find where is the asylum annual fee.

[00:06:43]The asylum annual fee is here.

[00:06:46]Under the heading of court, form I-589, which is your asylum application form, under annual asylum fee for asylum and for withholding removal.

[00:06:57]Now, as you can see, this is different than the one previous to that, which is the initial application fee for asylum and for withholding removal.

[00:07:07]This is the annual asylum fee and that's the fee that we're looking to pay for today.

[00:07:13]Now, as a matter of fact, this is also the way to pay for your annual asylum fee if you are having a case that's pending before the Board of Immigration Appeals because as you see, the BIA does not have a category that deals specifically with the um annual asylum fee. So, let's go back to the annual asylum fee for court.

[00:07:34]We're going to click yes and then it's going to ask for the A-number of the case that we're doing. Here you're going to put the A-number of the main applicant only. You don't have to pay for everybody else in the application.

[00:07:45]It's only for the main applicant.

[00:07:47]And here we going to write this A number.

[00:07:56]And then after I put the A number, it's going to say it's going to ask me what to do. I'm going to say pay now.

[00:08:02]It's going to put me an alert. Is this the A number you want to pay for? Please verify that you have the correct A number because if you do not have the correct A number and you end up paying for somebody else, this will not be good and it will affect your case.

[00:08:18]I'm going to say yes, I've checked the number. Now it's telling me that I'm going to be leaving the website and I'm going to be going to the pay.gov portal, which is the the portal for all US government payments. I'm going to say okay. Once I go there, it's going to have the payment amount of $102.

[00:08:33]And then I'm going to choose to pay by my credit card or debit card. And then I'm going to press continue.

[00:08:39]Now, it's going to ask for the card holder's name. This is my card, so I'm going to write my card.

[00:08:46]It's going to write the address. This is my office card, so I'm going to put my office address.

[00:08:55]It's going to ask for the city.

[00:08:57]I'm in the city of Huntington Beach.

[00:09:01]It's going to ask for the country.

[00:09:03]I'm in the United States of America.

[00:09:06]It's going to ask for the state. I'm in California. It's going to ask for the zip code.

[00:09:13]Now, if you notice every box that's filled, it changes its color from blue to green.

[00:09:18]Now, it's going to ask me to put in the credit card number.

[00:09:23]After you put the 16-digit credit card number, it's going to ask for the expiration date.

[00:09:33]Select the month and the year.

[00:09:35]And then it's going to ask for the security code, which is at the back of the card.

[00:09:42]And then you're going to press continue.

[00:09:45]It's going to tell you um it's going to review the information with you. It's going to review how much is the payment that you're paying paying with the plastic card, the type of the card, your name, your address.

[00:09:55]If you everything is correct, you say, "I authorize this charge." And you press continue.

[00:10:01]Now you've received a receipt. That receipt is very important to save. That receipt has your A-number on it showing that this was done for a specific A-number. It has the amount and it has the date of the payment. You have to download that receipt. So, I'm going to download this receipt right now. If you are not very computer savvy and you don't know how to download the receipts, then what I would suggest you to do is you can take your phone and take a picture of the receipt and save it in your phone. And that picture will be helpful for you later on. After you receive your receipt, you need to send it to your attorney so you can file it with the immigration court as proof that you have already filed your asylum annual fee. I hope this video is helpful and hopefully we'll see [music] you soon. Take care.