Asylum seekers should be able to find refuge here
We understand why immigration leads to a raucous and, too often, heated public policy debate. But what we fear is that this debate, especially the portion of it that centers on those fleeing oppression and seeking asylum in the United States, is losing sight of the people whose lives are at stake in this fight.
We’ll stipulate, as we have many times before in editorials, that it is critically important for the United States to have robust border controls, a legal process that is adhered to, and consequences for people who break the law. Our question in engaging in this debate, however, is always this: What should the law be?
In terms of asylum, it’s critically important that this country remain a refuge for those fleeing tyranny. By being that refuge, we undercut tyranny abroad. And by offering asylum, over the course of our history we have taken in millions of people who went on to serve this country with distinction.
So it is with some disappointment that we watched the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to stay an injunction on the Trump administration’s latest attempt to restrict asylum for those fleeing Central and South America.
Put a little more plainly, the rule change in question — which requires that asylum seekers who enter the U.S. from our southern border first seek asylum in a third country, almost certainly Guatemala or Mexico — took effect on July 16 without the usual preceding comment period.
As Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in an incisive dissent, the rule is “especially concerning” because it “topples decades of settled asylum practices and affects some of the most vulnerable people in the Western Hemisphere — without affording the public a chance to weigh in.”
For this reason alone, a California District Court was right to enjoin the rule. But, as Sotomayor points out in her dissent, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the lower court “found it probable that the rule was inconsistent with the asylum statute” which “provides that any noncitizen ‘physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States ... may apply for asylum.’ ”
And while there are “carefully calibrated exceptions” to asylum eligibility, namely “on the possibility that a person could safely resettle in a third country,” the Trump administration’s rule “does not consider whether refugees were safe or resettled in Mexico — just whether they traveled through it.” That “blunt approach,” said Sotomayor, “rewrote the statute.”
Moreover, the idea that asylum in Mexico or Guatemala is somehow equivalent to asylum in the U.S. is not based in fact. America has its problems with crime and violence, but its unequaled freedoms, long-established rule of law, and unparalleled economic opportunities are a magnet for millions of hopeful immigrants as well as a place of refuge from war and persecution for, in President Ronald Reagan’s words, “anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”
President Donald Trump called the Supreme Court’s decision to stay the injunction on the rule a “BIG United States Supreme Court WIN for the Border on Asylum!”
We respectfully disagree, and hope the court strikes it down when it eventually rules on the key issue involved, not just on the temporary injunction from a district court. Regardless of where the court lands, what’s needed is a congressional fix to our asylum laws and on immigration policy more broadly. Members of The Denver Post’s editorial board are Megan Schrader, editor of the editorial pages; Lee Ann Colacioppo, editor; Justin Mock, CFO; Bill Reynolds, vice president of circulation and production; Bob Kinney, vice president of information technology; and TJ Hutchinson, systems editor.