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Interpreters for Credible Fear Interviews

A credible fear interview is the screening an asylum officer does when someone in expedited removal says they are afraid to go back. You do not bring the interpreter to it: USCIS arranges one. This page says where that rule comes from, what the interview asks of the person through a telephone interpreter, and the work around it — the consultation, the review before a judge — that legal service providers book us for.

Do not bring an interpreter to a credible fear interview: USCIS arranges it

If you are asking whether you need to find your own interpreter for a credible fear interview: no. The regulation says that if the person cannot proceed effectively in English, and the asylum officer cannot proceed competently in a language the person speaks and understands, the officer shall arrange for the assistance of an interpreter (8 CFR 208.30(d)(5)). The interpreter must be at least 18 and may not be the person's attorney or representative, a witness for them, or anyone representing or employed by their country of nationality. In the 2022 rule on these interviews, USCIS described its existing contracts with telephonic interpreters for credible fear screening, and relay interpreting — through a second interpreter — when no interpreter speaks both English and a rare language or dialect (87 FR 18078).

The next stages are covered too. If the officer's finding is negative and an immigration judge reviews it, the immigration court provides the interpreter (8 CFR 1003.42(c)). If the finding is positive and USCIS keeps the case for an Asylum Merits Interview, the asylum office arranges a contract interpreter and tells applicants plainly that you do not need to bring an interpreter. So neither the person nor their family should be paying for an interpreter for any of those three.

Who books us, then: legal service providers and attorneys. The regulation lets the person consult anyone they choose before the interview and before any review, at no expense to the Government (208.30(d)(4); 1003.42(c)), and those consultations need an interpreter that no agency supplies. That is the work below.

What the interview asks of the person, through a telephone interpreter

The officer conducts the interview in a nonadversarial manner, apart from the public, and its purpose is to elicit all relevant and useful information on whether the person has a credible fear of persecution or torture (8 CFR 208.30(d)). In practice that means telling, for the first time and often from detention, why they left: who threatened them, what happened, why the police could not help. The interpreter is usually on a telephone line, so the person cannot see them, and everything runs consecutively: question, interpretation, answer, interpretation.

Two things go wrong. The first is language: a person from the highlands of Guatemala or from rural Mexico may speak Mam, K'iche' or Mixtec first and Spanish as a second language, and an account of persecution given in a second language loses detail. The rule asks for a language the person "speaks and understands", and USCIS describes relay interpreting for languages its interpreters do not cover. The second is the summary: the officer writes a summary of the material facts and, at the end, reviews it with the person and gives them a chance to correct errors (208.30(d)(6)). A name, a date or a sequence of events misheard on a phone line can be corrected there and nowhere as easily afterwards. If the person is too ill or exhausted to take part effectively, the officer may reschedule (208.30(d)(1)).

Family members who arrived together are generally included in one determination, but anyone may ask to have theirs made separately, and that option must be explained at the start (208.30(c)). That matters when part of the story — sexual violence, for example — is one a person will not tell in front of a spouse or a parent.

The consultation before the interview

USCIS says the person receives an orientation to the process, a list of free or low-cost legal service providers and a waiting period of at least 4 hours before the interview. Whatever the time available, the consultation that a legal provider can offer in it is short, usually by phone or video from a detention facility, and in the person's language. That is a three-way call: the lawyer, the person and our interpreter, consecutive, with no time for long explanations.

• Confirm the language first. In the first minutes, find out which language the person tells a long story in most comfortably, and whether they also speak Spanish, French or Portuguese well. That is the language they should ask the officer for.
• Explain the interpreter's role. The USCIS interpreter interprets everything, in the first person, and works for neither side. If the person does not understand the interpreter, or the interpreter speaks a different variety, the person should say so at once, not at the end.
• Tell them about the summary. The officer will read back a summary of the facts. The person should listen to it and correct anything wrong: names, dates, places, who did what.
• Ask about the separate determination if a family member is present and the story has parts the person may not tell in front of them.
• If the consultant will attend the interview, the regulation allows it, and the officer may let them make a statement at the end and may limit how many people are present (208.30(d)(4)). Whether anyone besides USCIS's interpreter may be on the line is for the asylum office; ask before planning on it.

After a negative finding: preparing for the judge's review

If the officer finds no credible fear, the person can ask an immigration judge to review it; USCIS says that generally there is no further review of the judge's decision (USCIS Q&A). The judge takes testimony under oath, may hold the review in person or by telephone or video, and the court provides the interpreter (8 CFR 1003.42(c)). The person may consult someone of their choosing before it.

That consultation is where an attorney goes through the officer's written record with the person. The determination includes the summary of material facts the officer relied on, and the attorney will want the person to hear it in their own language, line by line, to find what is missing or wrong. Reading an English document aloud in another language is sight translation; send the interpreter the summary before the call if the timing allows. If the finding is positive, the case goes to an Asylum Merits Interview or to immigration court, each with its own interpreter; what the attorney needs then is preparation, covered on interpreters for immigration attorney meetings and interpreters for immigration court hearings.

Booking a consultation or review preparation

Consultations from detention are almost always remote: $80 for the first hour per interpreter, no travel, by phone or by Zoom, Meet or Teams if the facility allows video. A 90-minute consultation is $120. Mam, K'iche', Mixtec and other limited-availability languages carry the 25–30% rate — $100 to $104 for that first hour — and need more notice to staff, so ask as soon as you know. If you are meeting the person in person at a facility, in person is $110 an hour with a two-hour minimum, plus travel at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, confirmed before you book; the facility's visiting and access rules apply.

Send the language and the country and region the person is from, any second language, how the facility connects legal calls, and the time window you have. We reply the same business day, and no payment is taken at request. Identity and civil documents the person will rely on later are written translation, a separate service; see certified translation for asylum cases.

By video, by phone or in person

Virtual interpreting runs on Zoom, Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, or over the telephone. It is quicker to arrange, costs less and carries no travel charge, and it suits appointments, calls and most meetings.

In person is what venues with their own rules tend to expect, and the right choice when documents are being signed or several people are speaking at once. Tell us the platform, or the city and the venue, when you send the request.

Languages

The standard-availability languages are: Spanish, Portuguese, French, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, Korean, Vietnamese, Haitian Creole, Polish, Italian, German, Japanese, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Tagalog, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Armenian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Serbian, Bosnian, Somali and Nepali. Every other language we offer carries the 25–30% limited-availability rate. If a language is not on that list it is not because we cannot do it — it is because the pool of qualified interpreters in the United States is small enough that we will not promise a date without checking.

Each language has its own page on what to watch for — dialects, names, dates, who the speakers usually are: see interpreters by language.

What it costs

Rates are per interpreter, per hour, and billed from the scheduled start time rather than from when everyone actually arrives.

• Virtual — $80 per hour, one-hour minimum. Zoom, Google Meet, Teams or telephone.
• In person — $110 per hour, two-hour minimum.
• Limited-availability languages — add 25–30%. Which languages those are is listed below rather than left vague.
• Travel for in-person work — $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location.

How the travel charge works out

Travel is charged at $0.70 per mile from the interpreter's location, which means you can work it out rather than wait for a quote: a 20-mile round trip is $14, a 60-mile round trip is $42, a 150-mile round trip is $105. There is no separate call-out fee on top.

We will not pretend to know in advance where the interpreter will be coming from — that depends on the language, the date and the venue. What we do is confirm the interpreter and the exact travel figure before you book, so it is never a surprise on the invoice. Virtual assignments carry no travel charge at all, which is one reason most of what we do is virtual.

How booking an interpreter works

• You send the request with the form below: the language, the setting, the format, the date and how long it should last.
• We confirm before you commit: the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one. We reply the same business day, and no payment is taken at this stage.
• You confirm, and the interpreter is booked for your date.

What to have ready

The more of this comes in the first message, the fewer exchanges before you have a price:

• The language, the date, the start time and how long it should run.
• Virtual or in person: the platform, or the city and the venue.
• The setting and the subject matter.
• How many people need interpreting for.
• Any credential the venue requires of the interpreter.

Request an interpreter

Tell us the date, the language and the setting and we will come back with the interpreter, the exact price and the travel figure if there is one — before you commit to anything.

Sources

What this page says about the rules was checked against these official sources on October 28, 2026. Rules change; the source is always the authority.

• 8 CFR 208.30 — Credible fear determinations involving stowaways and applicants for admission (eCFR, current)
• 8 CFR 1003.42 — Review of credible fear determination by an immigration judge (eCFR, current)
• USCIS — Questions and Answers: Credible Fear Screening (updated October 27, 2026)
• USCIS — Asylum Merits Interview with USCIS: Processing After a Positive Credible Fear Determination (updated May 18, 2026)
• DHS and DOJ — Procedures for Credible Fear Screening and Consideration of Asylum, Withholding of Removal, and CAT Protection Claims by Asylum Officers, interim final rule, 87 FR 18078 (March 29, 2022), preamble on interpreters (govinfo)

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