Trump limits asylum, says migrants must ‘have merit’
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday invoked extraordinary national security powers to deny asylum to migrants who enter the country illegally, tightening the border as caravans of Central Americans slowly approach the United States.
Trump is using the same powers he used to push through a version of the travel ban that was upheld by the Supreme Court. The proclamation puts into place regulations adopted Thursday that circumvent laws stating that anyone is eligible for asylum no matter how he or she enters the country.
“We need people in our country but they have to come in legally and they have to have merit,” Trump said Friday as he departed for Paris.
Administration officials say the measures, likely to face legal challenges, go into effect Saturday for at least three months, but could be extended. They don’t affect people who are already in the country.
The changes are meant to funnel asylum seekers through official border crossings for speedy rulings, officials said, instead of having them try to circumvent such crossings on the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) border.
But the busy ports of entry already have long lines and waits, forcing immigration officials to tell some migrants to turn around and come back to make their claims. Even despite that, illegal crossings are historically low.
The move was spurred in part by caravans of Central American migrants slowly moving north on foot but will apply to anyone caught crossing illegally, officials said. It’s unknown whether those in the caravan, many fleeing violence in their homeland, plan to cross illegally.
“The arrival of large numbers ... will contribute to the overloading of our immigration and asylum system and to the release of thousands ... into the interior of the United States,” Trump said in the proclamation, calling it a crisis.
Administration officials said those denied asylum under the proclamation may be eligible for similar forms of protection if they fear returning to their countries, though they would be subject to a tougher threshold. Those forms of protection include “withholding of removal” — which is similar to asylum, but doesn’t allow for green cards or bringing families — or protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Homeland Security officials said they were adding staffing at the border crossings to manage the expected crush, but it’s not clear how migrants, specifically families, would be held as their cases are adjudicated. Fam- ily detention centers are largely at capacity. Trump has said he wanted to erect “tent cities,” but nothing has been funded or decided.
The U.S. is also working with Mexico to send some migrants back across the border. Right now, laws allow only Mexican nationals to be swiftly returned and increasingly those claiming asylum are from Central America, not Mexico.
The announcement was the latest push to enforce Trump’s hardline stance on immigration through regulatory changes and presidential orders, bypassing Congress which has not passed any immigration law reform. But those efforts have been largely thwarted by legal challenges and, in the case of family separations this year, stymied by a global outcry that prompted Trump to scrap them.
Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said the latest changes were clearly illegal.
“U.S. 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,” he said.
Trump who pushed immigration issues hard in the days leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, railing against the caravans that are still hundreds of miles from the border.
He has made little mention of the issue since the election, but has sent troops to the border in response. As of Thursday, there are more than 5,600 U.S. troops deployed to the border mission, with about 550 actually working on the border in Texas.
MEXICO CITY — About 900 Central American migrants headed out of Mexico City on Friday to embark on the longest and most dangerous leg of their journey to the U.S. border, while thousands more were waiting one more day at a massive improvised shelter.
The group that got a head start bundled their few possessions and started off, taking a subway to the north part of the city and then hiking down an expressway with a police escort.
For many, it was the first time they had ever been in a metro system, and they had little knowledge of the city or the 1,740 mile route to Tijuana that lay ahead of them.
Carlos Castanaza, a 29-year-old plumber from Guatemala City, wrapped himself from head to toe in a blanket against the cold and asked bystanders where the first toll booth was. When told it was in a town about 20 miles away, he carefully wrote the name of the town on his hand with a pen to remember where he was going.
Deported for driving without a license after a decade working in Connecticut, Castanaza was desperate to get back to his two U.S.-born children. “I’ve been wanting to get back for more than a year, but I couldn’t until the caravan came through,” said Castanaza. “That’s why I joined the caravan.”
The advanced group hoped to reach the northcentral city of Queretaro, about 105 miles to the northwest, by nightfall.
Meanwhile, another 4,000 to 5,000 migrants milled around the massive shelter improvised at a Mexico City sports complex, impatient to leave.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” shouted Eddy Rivera, 37, a railthin migrant from Honduras who said he couldn’t take staying in the camp any longer. “We are all sick, from the humidity and the cold,” said Rivera, who left behind four children and a wife in Honduras. “We have to get going, we have to get to Tijuana.”
Though he was unsure how an unskilled farmworker like himself would be allowed in the United States, he had a simple dream: earn enough money to build a little house for his family back in Puerto Cortes, Honduras.
Thousands of migrants have spent the past few days resting, receiving medical attention and debating how to proceed with their arduous trek through Central America and Mexico which began in mid-October. On Thursday, caravan representatives met with officials from the local United Nations office and demanded buses to take them to the border, saying the trek would be too hard and dan- gerous for walking and hitchhiking.
Caravan coordinator Milton Benitez said officials had offered them buses for women and children but organizers demanded that they be for everyone. By Friday, the migrants said they were so angry at the U.N.’s lack of help that they no longer wanted U.N. observers with the caravan.
The United Nations on Friday denied the offer, releasing a statement saying its agencies “are unable to provide the transportation demanded by some members of the caravan.”
The migrants made a big point of sticking together, their only form of self-protection.
Felix Rodriguez, 35, of Choluteca, Honduras had been at the Mexico City sports complex for more than a week.
“We all want to get moving,” he said. But he was waiting for the main group to leave Saturday, noting “it is better to leave in a group, because leaving in small bunches is dangerous.”
Mexico City is more than 600 miles from the nearest U.S. border crossing at McAllen, Texas, but the area around the Mexican border cities of Reynosa, Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo is so rife with drug gangs that the migrants consider it too dangerous to risk.
A previous caravan in the spring opted for the longer route to Tijuana in the far northwest, across from San Diego. That caravan steadily dwindled to only about 200 people by the time it reached the border.
“California is the longest route but is the best border, while Texas is the closest but the worst” border, said Jose Luis Fuentes of the National Lawyers Guild.