ACLU fights border asylum ban
Coalition of immigrant advocacy groups files suit against Trump administration in attempt to halt new policy.
WASHINGTON — A coalition of immigrant advocacy groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the Trump administration in a federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday in an attempt to halt the implementation of a new policy disqualifying most asylumseekers who pass through Mexico before reaching the United States.
The attorneys suing the government argued in their complaint that the Trump administration lacks the authority to exclude asylumseekers who arrive at the U.S. southern border, because U.S. immigration laws state clearly that the government cannot disqualify applicants on the basis of where they arrive.
“As part of our nation’s commitment to the protection of people fleeing persecution and consistent with our international obligations, it is a long-standing federal law that merely transiting through a third country is not a basis to categorically deny asylum to refugees who arrive at our shores,” the complaint states.
Attorney General William Barr said in a statement Monday that those who are truly facing persecution should apply for refuge in the first safe place they reach, not the most desirable destination.
Trump administration officials said the policy decree was needed to protect the U.S. asylum system from a flood of meritless claims by applicants who are seeking better economic opportunity but who are not facing persecution.
Department of Justice data show asylum filings have nearly quadrupled in the past five years, and fewer than 20% of Central American applicants are eventually granted protections by U.S. courts.
The plaintiffs seeking to block the implementation of the restrictions say the Trump administration violated federal rule-making procedures in formulating the restrictions, and the Immigration and Nationality Act states that once an applicant reaches U.S. soil, he or she has a right to appeal for protection.
“This is the Trump administration’s most extreme run at an asylum ban yet,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU attorney who has led the group’s legal challenges to Trump executive action on immigration. “It clearly violates domestic and international law, and cannot stand,” he said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the Center for Constitutional Rights and others joined the ACLU in seeking the injunction in the Northern District of California.
Meanwhile, nearly two dozen immigrants were allowed to cross the border to seek asylum on Tuesday.
At the crossing in Tijuana, Mexico, two asylumseekers who work with Mexican authorities called 12 people whose numbers were first on a waiting list to enter through a San Diego border crossing.
At a crossing in Juarez, Mexico, 10 Cuban asylumseekers were called by Mexican officials and led across the Paso Del Norte Bridge to El Paso, Texas.
“I’d rather be in prison the rest of my life than go back to Cuba,” said Dileber Urrista Sanchez, who had hoped his number would be called Tuesday, but he was further down the list.
He criticized the Trump administration’s new policy, pointing out that the first country he was able to reach after leaving Cuba was Nicaragua.
“How are we going to apply for asylum in Nicaragua when it’s just as communist?” he said.