Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the acting director of United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, said in a statement that the proposed changes would alleviate an “overextended system,” allowing his agency to address an annual deficit of nearly $1.3 billion a year. Former agency officials and immigration lawyers, however, said the decision to charge asylum seekers erased a long-held principle of not placing a financial burden on some of the world’s most vulnerable people seeking protection.

“There was a recognition that the likelihood of their ability to pay is really in question,” said Barbara Strack, a former chief of the agency’s refugee affairs division under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “The only way to understand this is as a part of the administration’s campaign of hostility against the asylum program.”

The Trump administration has already tried to limit immigration to the United States through numerous policies that favor those with more wealth. This summer, Mr. Cuccinelli announced a “public charge” rule that would deny poor immigrants green cards if they were deemed likely to use government benefit programs like food stamps and subsidized housing. Last month, the administration said it would deny visas to immigrants who cannot prove they will have health insurance or the ability to pay for medical costs once they become permanent residents of the United States.

Federal judges have blocked both policies from taking effect as legal challenges play out.

The White House has also specifically targeted asylum seekers arriving at the southwestern border. More than 50,000 have been forced to wait in Mexico while their immigration cases are adjudicated, and the administration is trying to deny protections to migrants who fail to apply for asylum in at least one country on their way to the border.

Mr. Cuccinelli has often said that the agency is strapped for resources as it works to tackle a backlog of more than one million cases in immigration court. .