The US government is adding new asylum restrictions to make it virtually impossible to be granted asylum by the US. On the southern border the government is sending applicants back to dangerous and squalid conditions in Mexico to wait months for their hearings. The hearings then take place in “tent courts” on the US side of the border. Instead of appearing before judges, applicants have video hearings and little access to attorneys. In fact the public and press were only allowed limited access to these courts in Jan. 2020, after months of operation. It’s clear that the administration is not concerned with “due process” or fairness but are using the rules as a quick way to deny cases. This is in addition to a rule that allows USCIS to forbid asylum applications from immigrants who traveled through a third country en route to the U.S. and failed to apply for asylum there.
Immigration court judges are subject to case quotas which make it impossible to conduct fair asylum hearings as these cases are complicated and lengthy. Many immigration court judges have resigned in protest.
Currently asylum applicants can apply for employment authorization (aka EAD or Employment Authorization Document) 150 days after submitting an asylum application. The new proposal is to increase that to 365 days, and also deny EADs to applicants who entered the United States illegally, terminating the permit immediately if the asylum application is denied, and removing the 30-day deadline for USCIS to rule on permit applications.
In December 2019 USCIS and EOIR proposed new regulations that would provide seven new mandatory bars to eligibility for asylum for certain offenses committed in the United States. Currently the law bars asylum for those with convictions for particularly serious crimes. The new bar would include a felony under federal or state law; Alien Smuggling or Harboring; Illegal Reentry); crimes involving criminal street gang activity; operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of an intoxicant; domestic violence offense, or who are found by an adjudicator to have engaged in acts of battery or extreme cruelty in a domestic context, even if no conviction resulted; and certain misdemeanors under federal or state law for offenses related to false identification; the unlawful receipt of public benefits or the possession or trafficking of a controlled substance or controlled-substance paraphernalia.
These are only some of the new restrictions on asylum in the US. Refugees have also been virtually barred from the US. Early European immigrants to the US were religious refugees and the US has had a history of offering refuge to those facing persecution in their home countries – while also refusing to help many, such as Jews who sought refuge from the Nazis. This is a sad new low for our country, and I hope a future government will restore prior protections.
