The Trump administration’s attack on the right to asylum continues. “According to a new rule published in the Federal Register, asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone,” the AP reports.
While most media seems to be framing this Asylum Ban 2.0 as affecting mostly Central Americans, immigration attorney Taylor Levy said it “also applies to the many asylum-seekers who enter at the southern border form other countries, like Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, DRC, Angola, Cameroon, etc.” What it also is, other experts say, is blatantly illegal, and it will be challenged in court, the American Civil Liberties Union said in a statement.
“Congress has been clear that the only way that an administration can bar asylum seekers when they pass through another country (e.g. Mexico,) is with a SIGNED Safe Third Country agreement,” tweeted Philip Wolgin, immigration managing director at the Center for American Progress. “Spoiler alert: They don't have one here. But hey, why should Trump follow the law?”
Remember that the administration has already taken numerous actions to stifle the right to asylum at the southern border—and remember that these policies will continue to claim more lives. Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his baby Valeria drowned at the border because the administration's "metering" policy drove them to desperation, and ultimately their deaths. Now, presumably thousands of people who have been waiting on the Mexican side of the border for weeks and months to apply for asylum will be barred.
There is a crisis at the border, and it’s inhumane—and illegal—treatment of human beings at our southern border. Tweeted Wolgin, ”And for all Trump's claims to 'want legal immigration' [he] is willing to break whatever laws it takes to stop people from coming legally. Don't let his nativist agenda fool you. This is about restricting legal immigrants, and no amount of lawlessness is too much for Trump.”