Denying asylum

Administration shifts onus to Guatemala to assist migrants

The Trump administration puts the onus on Guatemala to assist migrants.

WASHINGTON — Long before a surge of migrants from Central America overwhelmed the southwestern border, the Trump administration was already waging a broad assault on the rules determining who can seek asylum in the United States.

Monday, the administration announced one of its most restrictive rules yet for a system, enshrined in international law, that President Donald Trump has called “ridiculous” and “insane.”

In a move that would stop virtually all Central American families who are fleeing persecution and poverty from entering the United States, Trump administration officials said they would deny asylum to migrants who failed to apply for protections in the first country they passed through on their way north.

Under the new rule, Hondurans and Salvadorans would have to apply for — and be denied — asylum in Guatemala or Mexico before they were eligible to apply for asylum in the United States. Guatemalans would have to apply for and be denied asylum in Mexico.

The rule would effectively limit asylum protections to Mexicans and those who cross the United States’ southwestern border by sea. But migrants from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala make up the vast majority of asylumseekers who have tried to enter the United States in record numbers this year. Border Patrol has arrested 510,412 migrant family members from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala at the southwestern border thus far in fiscal year 2019, compared with more than 3,200 Mexican family members.

Many Africans, Cubans and Haitians who travel through Mexico to the border would also be barred from obtaining the protections.

The administration made the announcement despite the fact that Guatemala and Mexico have refused to go along with the plan — meaning the countries have made no assurances that they will grant asylum to the migrants who are headed to the United States.

But the Trump administration, which has been negotiating fruitlessly for months with Guatemala and Mexico on the plan, gave up and made the announcement without any deal after talks with Guatemala broke down and the country’s president, Jimmy Morales, backed out of a meeting Monday at the White House. Talks with Mexico remain in flux.

The new rule is expected to be immediately challenged. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement that the rule “could not be more inconsistent with our domestic laws or international laws” and said his organization would sue swiftly.

Trump administration officials countered that the surge of migrants at the border was a growing catastrophe and that something had to be done. “This rule is a lawful exercise of authority provided by Congress to restrict eligibility for asylum,” Attorney General William Barr said. “The United States is a generous country but is being completely overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens along the southern border.”

So far, the administration’s efforts have largely failed to stem the flow of migrants. In May, 144,000 surged across the border from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. While arrests declined in June by 28 percent, officials estimate that by the end of the year, almost 1 million migrants might have crossed the southwestern border, most of them hoping to stay permanently by claiming asylum.