Trump immigration adviser wants more countries to grant asylum

Asylum. One of President Donald Trump’s top immigration priorities if he is reelected would be to use the model of the agreements reached with Central American governments to make countries around the world respond to asylum applications from people who ask to take refuge in the United States, said a senior advisor on Friday.

Stephen Miller, Architect key of Trump’s immigration policies, he said the agreements would help end “asylum fraud, asylum buying and asylum abuse globally.”

In an interview with The Associated Press, Miller also predicted a broader crackdown on “sanctuary” jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal immigration authorities, and that the government would use “all its power, resources and authority.” He promised that there will be more measures in favor of legal immigration “based on the merits”.

The “Cooperative Asylum Agreements” that the government reached in 2019 have allowed people from El Salvador and Honduras who want asylum to be flown to Guatemala to ask for it in that country, denying them an opportunity to apply in the United States.

From November to March, when the coronavirus pandemic forced the suspension of flights to Guatemala, only 20 of 939 Hondurans and Salvadorans sent by plane requested asylum there. Almost all returned to their homeland, in what became known as “deportation with scale.”

Like many Trump policies that have dramatically transformed America’s immigration system, the bilateral agreements are being challenged in court. Critics note that asylum seekers are sent to countries with high levels of violence and poverty and little infrastructure to handle such requests.

The coronavirus hit the United States before flights to Honduras and El Salvador began, so they have not started.

Trump and his Democratic rival Joe Biden have paid scant attention to immigration in their 2020 campaigns, despite a heated discussion during Thursday’s debate sparked by news that court-appointed attorneys have failed to find the parents. of 545 children who were separated from their families shortly after the Trump administration began.

The president has not yet outlined in detail his immigration priorities for his second term should he be reelected, although he has openly raised the possibility of trying to revoke a constitutional right to be a US citizen by birth.