Suit filed over U.S. plan to halt asylum seekers
As the Trump administration began Tuesday to implement a new policy barring virtually all migrants fleeing Central America from seeking asylum in the United States, immigrantsupport groups filed suit in San Francisco calling the action both illegal and potentially deadly.
“It is longstanding 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 organizations said in the lawsuit. By excluding anyone who passes through another country, such as Mexico, from applying for asylum at the southern border, they said, the new rule “cruelly closes our doors to refugees fleeing persecution.”
The suit seeks an injunction that would halt the policy, which was announced Monday and took effect Tuesday. Its impact may not be apparent immediately, however, because of the backlog in the asylum system. No court hearing has been scheduled yet.
Asylum allows an immigrant to remain in the country, obtain a work permit and eventually apply for citizenship. It is granted to foreigners who can show a “wellfounded fear of persecution” in their homeland for reasons such as race, religion, political views, and, under recent rulings, sexual orientation.
With migration surging from the violenceplagued countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, administration officials announced their latest and most farreaching effort to restrict entry. It denies asylum to anyone who has entered another country before reaching the United States, with narrow exceptions — for victims of human trafficking, and for those who have unsuccessfully sought asylum in the country they entered.
Attorney General William Barr said the U.S. is being “overwhelmed” by migrants who have no legitimate claim to refuge here. He said Congress has authorized the administration, in such circumstances, to narrow eligibility for asylum.
But the lawsuit said federal law explicitly allows migrants to apply for U.S. asylum “regardless of where they enter the United States,” unless they were “firmly resettled in another country” after fleeing their homeland.
Federal law also specifies that noncitizens can be required to seek asylum in another country only when the U.S. has reached an agreement with that country requiring it to provide a “full and fair procedure” and protections from persecution, the suit said. The U.S. has only one such agreement, with Canada, and has recently been unable to negotiate similar arrangements with Guatemala and Mexico.
Guatemala’s asylum system is “barely functioning,” the suit said, and Mexico’s system is also inadequate, leaving migrants “at risk of kidnapping, disappearance, trafficking, and sexual assault” while awaiting review.
Based on the same U.S. laws, a federal judge and appeals court in San Francisco rejected the Trump administration’s attempt last fall to deny asylum to anyone who crossed the border illegally in any place other than designated ports of entry, which are currently filled beyond capacity. The Supreme Court denied review of the case.
However, in May, another panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the administration to enforce another new rule requiring asylumseekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are under review, which can take a year or more.
“Through policy after policy, this administration has manufactured the crisis at our southern border,” said Melissa Crow, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which is taking part in the suit. “The new rule would only make this situation worse, while jeopardizing the safety and security of countless migrants.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said Monday it feared the new policy would put “vulnerable families at risk.”
The suit also argued that the Trump administration had ignored federal laws requiring at least 30 days of public comment for new rules and a “reasoned explanation” for changing previous policies. Administration officials said the 30day period would prompt a flurry of migration before the rule took effect.
In fact, said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney in the case, “the administration is unhappy with the asylum rules Congress has enacted. Congress understood that asylumseekers would transit through countries,” and if administration officials want to change the restrictions, “they need to convince Congress to change the law.”