Andrew Davidson oversaw a 2021 initiative that would require supervisory review of all asylum decisions made by case officers.  This produced concerns that officers would feel undue pressure to approve invalid claims.

As the Washington Times explained in 2021:

Homeland Security has issued new rules requiring every affirmative-asylum decision to undergo a supervisor’s review, in a move the department described as “quality assurance” but which one former staffer said was an attempt to browbeat officers into approving more cases.

The memo from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services revokes a Trump-era policy that had chiefly limited reviews to decisions by new asylum officers, figuring that those on the job more than six months or who had done at least 150 cases no longer needed hand-holding.

Andrew Davidson, chief of USCIS’s asylum division, called that policy “deficient” and said it “no longer reflects the … operational reality and it is not appropriately tailored to the program’s quality needs.”

Beneath that bureaucratic-speak, former agency officials said what the Biden team is doing is scrapping a policy that made adjudications more efficient all in the name of wiping clean anything with the Trump imprimatur.

“This is odd,” Ken Cuccinelli, who made the changes while running USCIS in 2019, told The Times. “It will slow down case consideration for sure.”

Overly generous asylum approvals have been a major part of the Biden immigration agenda. This policy to pressure asylum officers into approving more cases is part and parcel of the Biden open borders policy, and Andrew Davidson, then chief of USCIS’s asylum division, left his fingerprints all over this policy.

Source: EXCLUSIVE: DHS ditches Trump asylum screening policy (lexis.com)

The COVID pandemic saw the US government gain unprecedented control of the southern border, as public health needs forced DHS to apply significantly more scrutiny to those entering the United States.  Upon assuming office in 2021, the Biden Administration repealed these measures in one of its first policy initiatives.  Mr. Davidson played a key role in this process.

Agency: U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Department of Homeland Security; Executive Office for Immigration Review, Department of Justice.

SUMMARY: On December 23, 2020, the Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") and the Department of Justice ("DOJ") (collectively, "the Departments") published a final rule ("Security Bars rule") to clarify that the "danger to the security of the United States" standard in the statutory bar to eligibility for asylum and withholding of removal encompasses certain emergency public health concerns and to make certain other changes; that rule was scheduled to take effect on January 22, 2021. As of January 21, 2021, the Departments delayed the rule's effective date for 60 days to March 22, 2021. In this rule, the Departments are further extending and delaying the rule's effective date to December 31, 2021. In addition, in light of evolving information regarding the best approaches to mitigating the spread of communicable disease, the Departments are also considering action to rescind or revise the Security Bars rule. The Departments are seeking public comment on whether that rule represents an effective way to protect public health while reducing barriers for noncitizens seeking forms of protection in the United States, or whether the Security Bars rule should be revised or revoked…

….

…FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

For USCIS: Andrew Davidson, Asylum Division Chief, Refugee, Asylum and International Affairs Directorate, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, DHS; telephone 240-721-3000 (not a toll-free call).

The Security Bars rule, if implemented, would’ve helped to significantly slow the flow of migrants into the US during the COVID years. As a Trump-era policy, the Biden Administration decided to block (through regulatory delay) implementation of this rule shortly after Biden took office. Andrew Davidson helped to delay the rule, and thus helped to kill a Trump-era immigration policy that would’ve helped to close our borders during the chaotic first years of the Biden Administration.

(source)