- About
- Topics
- Picks
- Audio
- Story
- In-Depth
- Opinion
- News
- Donate
- Signup for our newsletterOur Editors' Best Picks.Send
Read, Debate: Engage.
| topic: | Refugees and Asylum |
|---|---|
| located: | USA |
| editor: | Yair Oded |
With the eyes of the nation turned to the undulating threat of coronavirus and the raging fight for racial justice, the Trump administration has proposed a new rule that would effectively gut the country’s asylum mechanism by disqualifying people fleeing gang-related or gender-based violence from applying, as well as mounting bureaucratic hurdles. For the next two weeks, the government will continue to receive public comments about the proposed regulation.
In order to secure political points with his voter base, Trump has made cracking down on immigration a cornerstone of his presidency. The result has been a flurry of draconian regulations that drastically limit people’s prospects for applying for asylum, mass deportations, and repeated violations of asylum seeker’s human rights through indefinite incarceration under horrific conditions, family separations, and escalating raids on communities by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
Now, the Trump administration is proposing a rule that would all but tear down America’s asylum mechanism by significantly limiting the categories qualifying people for asylum, streamlining the deportation process, and introducing additional bureaucratic demands from applicants.
Notably, the proposed rule disqualifies people fleeing gender-based violence from asylum eligibility in the U.S. This includes victims of rape, honor crimes, female genital mutilation, forced marriages, sex trafficking, and LGBTQ people fleeing persecution due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Gender-based violence accounts for a considerable portion of asylum cases in the U.S., particularly among women. Furthermore, a recent report by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) indicates that the spread of coronavirus has led to a spike in gender-based violence across Latin America. The implementation of Trump’s proposed rule would therefore bear catastrophic consequences for victims fleeing for their safety.
The rule also seeks to exclude gang-related violence as a legitimate cause for asylum, allow immigration judges to deny applicants without a hearing and testimony (which would expedite deportations), and - in defiance of international and domestic laws - prohibit people who entered the U.S. illegally from lodging asylum requests.
These constitute merely a fraction of the dozens of proposed changes to the current asylum regulations. If implemented, the new rules would apply to all asylum seekers, regardless of their current status or how long they have been in the United States.
In a poignant opinion piece for The Washington Post, Nickole Miller, a clinical teaching fellow with the Immigrant Rights Clinic at the University of Baltimore School of Law, stated: “As an immigration attorney, I am intimately aware of the human consequences of these proposals. If they are implemented, I expect that none of my clients would win asylum. A mother who carried her paralyzed daughter on her back thousands of miles to escape a man who repeatedly raped her with impunity would likely lose her case and be deported. So, too, would a boy who journeyed alone through Guatemala and Mexico to the United States after members of a powerful cartel shot his brother and threatened to kill him next for his refusal to relinquish control of their family farm.”
As is required by law, the government is obligated to review public comments regarding its proposed policies. Americans have until 15 July, 2020 to submit original statements about the new asylum regulations before they go into effect. The link below contains instructions on how to submit your comment.
It is imperative that the new rule be met with a raging public outcry. The annihilation of America’s asylum mechanism will be sure to set the country, and potentially the world, on a sinister path of increasing governmental and institutional disregard for human rights.
