Trump to end asylum at border

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Monday it will end asylum protections for most migrants who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down immigration.

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 rule applies to anyone arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Sometimes asylum seekers from Africa, Cuba or Haiti and other continents arrive there, but the vast majority of migrants arriving recently come from Central America .

There are some exceptions, including for victims of human trafficking and asylum-seekers who were denied protection in a country. If the country the migrant passed through did not sign one of the major international treaties governing how refugees are managed (though most Western countries signed them) a migrant could still apply for U.S. asylum.

But the move by President Donald Trump’s administration, even if blocked by courts, is reversing decades of U.S. policy on how refugees are treated and marks an escalation even compared to other hardline efforts meant to choke off the flow of people from poor and war-torn nations.

Attorney General William Barr said that the United States is “a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed” by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of migrants at the southern border.

“This rule will decrease forum shopping by economic migrants and those who seek to exploit our asylum system to obtain entry to the United States,” Barr said in a statement.

The policy is almost certain to face a legal challenge; the American Civil Liberties Union already signaled it would sue. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who has litigated some of the major challenges to the Trump administration’s immigration policies, said the rule was unlawful.