In a streamlining effort, the Department of Homeland Security announced the new rule Thursday that would allow statutory bars to asylum be applied much earlier during screening.

“The proposed rule we have published today is yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

“We will continue to take action, but fundamentally it is only Congress that can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system.”

According to the department, those who are deemed a national security threat are taken into Homeland Security custody as their application moves through processing.

The new rule would allow for asylum officers to issue denial claims within days of the applicant being encountered by border agents, it said, “significantly shortening the overall time between encounter and removal from the United States.”

President Joe Biden has enacted a slew of immigration policies in an effort to combat migrant encounters at the southern border, which saw an historically high flow this winter before dropping in the last few months.

The number of people this rule will affect is expected to be minimal, but a senior Department of Homeland Security official told reporters on a call Thursday that those affected will be the individuals “we are most concerned about from a public safety and national security lens.”

The official explained that the rule will allow asylum officers to consider clear information that disqualifies someone from asylum as early in the process as possible.

“I will say this is really intended to be a national security and public safety measure,” the official said. “And so it is intended to ensure that, again, the individuals that we are most concerned about that we encounter — people with serious criminal histories or links to terrorism — can be removed as early as possible in the process.”

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who has been feuding with the Biden administration over immigration for years now, chastised the president over the new rule, calling it “feckless” while accusing him of “sidestepping” laws enforced by Congress.

“President Biden is not just authorized — he is required — to deny illegal entry, detain illegal immigrants, and build border barriers,” he said in a statement.

The public is being encouraged to make comment on the rule by June 12.