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US-POLITICS-IMMIGRATION
US to deny asylum to illegal border crossers
WASHINGTON, Nov 9, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – The United States will no longer allow
people who enter the country illegally to claim asylum, officials said
Thursday, unveiling a controversial new crackdown on immigration.
The restriction on asylum claims will seek to address what a senior
administration official called the “historically unparalleled abuse of our
immigration system” along the border with Mexico.
The new rule was published by the Department of Homeland Security and is
expected to get President Donald Trump’s signature shortly — as well as face
court challenges.
The American Civil Liberties Union said that the right to request asylum
must be granted to anyone entering the country, regardless of where they
were.
“US law specifically allows individuals to apply for asylum whether or not
they are at a port of entry. It is illegal to circumvent that by agency or
presidential decree,” the ACLU said.
But according to the new rule, Trump has authority to restrict illegal
immigration “if he determines it to be in the national interest.”
Trump’s administration argues that he has the executive power to curb
immigration in the name of national security, a power he invoked right after
taking office with a controversial ban on travelers from several mostly-
Muslim countries — the final version of which was upheld by the US Supreme
Court on June 26 after a protracted legal battle.
“Today’s rule applies this important principle to aliens who violate such a
suspension or restriction regarding the southern border,” Secretary of
Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and acting attorney general Matthew
Whitaker said.
Those seeking political or other kinds of asylum — nearly all of them
coming from impoverished and violent crime-plagued countries of Central
America — will be heard exclusively at the border crossings, administration
officials told journalists.
This is expected to put a dent in those streaming into an already
overburdened system, officials said, noting that there is a backlog of more
than 700,000 cases in the immigration courts.
– Campaign controversy –
Many politicians on both sides of the aisle agree that the US immigration
system is hugely inefficient and unable to cope with demand. However, Trump’s
focus on the issue during campaigning for Tuesday’s hotly contested midterm
congressional elections was criticized as veering into immigrant-bashing and
even racism.
In speeches and on Twitter, Trump hammered away nearly daily at “caravans”
of a few thousand impoverished Central Americans that periodically attempt to
walk up through Mexico and then gain entry to the United States.
He called a current caravan, which is still hundreds of miles from the US
border and dwindling in numbers, an “invasion” and said it would bring
hardened criminals to US streets.
Administration officials say that aside from the rhetoric the border really
does have a problem, given that anyone who manages to get across can request
asylum and subsequently often vanish while their case sits in the court
system.
“The vast majority of these applications eventually turn out to be non-
meritorious,” a senior administration official said, asking not to be
identified.
Less than 10 percent of cases result in asylum being granted, the
government says.
Human rights campaigners and other critics of the Trump crackdown say that
by restricting asylum seekers to the narrow border crossing points — which
are already under enormous pressure — the government is effectively shutting
the door on people who may truly be fleeing for their lives.
“The government cannot abdicate its responsibility towards migrants fleeing
harm,” the New York Immigration Coalition advocacy group said. “We will
resist this.”
But the administration official argued that “what we’re attempting to do is
trying to funnel credible fear claims, or asylum claims, through the ports of
entry where we are better resourced.”
That way, he said, courts will “handle those claims in an expeditious and
efficient manner, so that those who do actually require an asylum protection
get those protections.”
In 2018, border patrols registered more than 400,000 illegal border
crossers, homeland security said. And in the last five years, the number of
those requesting asylum has increased by 2,000 percent, it said.
BSS/AFP/MRI/0835 hrs