Trump's Asylum Restrictions Draw Skepticism From U.S. Judge
Trump's Asylum Restrictions Draw Skepticism From U.S. Judge
(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge in California expressed skepticism about the Trump administration’s new restrictions that would make most migrants seeking to cross the southern border ineligible for sanctuary in the U.S. -- setting up a possible conflict with a Washington judge’s decision hours earlier to let the rules stand for now.
U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in San Francisco asked pointed questions of government lawyers at a hearing Wednesday over a policy that no one crossing the U.S.-Mexico border will be eligible for asylum if they failed to apply for protection from persecution or torture in one of the countries they crossed en route. The change is aimed at families traversing Mexico and Central America’s “Northern Triangle” region of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.
Tigar was particularly leery of whether Mexico is equipped to handle a large volume of asylum seekers and voiced concern about what role Guatemala will play. The judge said he plans to issue a ruling by day’s end on a request by immigrant-advocacy groups to temporarily block the rules while the legal challenges to them play out.
These new restrictions, which took effect July 16, apply predominantly to immigrants from Central America who have been arriving in large numbers at the southern border and who, according to the administration, have been abusing the asylum process to gain entrance to the U.S.
The rationale for the rules is “the need to dis-incentivize aliens with meritless asylum claims from seeking admission to the United States, thereby relieving stress on immigration enforcement and adjudicatory authorities, prioritizing individuals who are unable to obtain protection from persecution elsewhere,” the government said in a court filing.
The American Civil Liberties Union says the rules are "flatly inconsistent" with the Immigration and Nationality Act, which specifies an alien can be categorically denied asylum only under very specific circumstances because of his or her relationship with a transit country. This would be the case if an immigrant was firmly settled in a third country, not merely traveling through it, according to the ACLU.
During the San Francisco hearing, Tigar noted that asylum “applications are up dramatically,” but said there’s no indication that Mexico’s process for reviewing applications has grown to accommodate the increase.
He also said that while the administration’s restrictions refer repeatedly to the “Northern Triangle,” the rules lack details about Guatemala’s asylum policy. Guatemala is a key gateway for migrants and drug trafficking heading toward Mexico and the U.S. Its homicide rate has long been among the highest in the Western Hemisphere, fueled by street gangs with ties to Mexican drug cartels.
“I was not able to find in the rule a scintilla of evidence” about the adequacy of the asylum process in Guatemala, Tigar said. “There’s not even a mention of it in the rule.”
In the Washington case, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly’s decision appeared on the docket without a written ruling providing further explanation. Kelly was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017.
The White House praised Kelly’s ruling as “a victory for Americans concerned about the crisis at our southern border.”
“The court properly rejected the attempt of a few special interest groups to block a rule that discourages abuse of our asylum system,” according a statement from the president’s press secretary. “Tens of thousands of migrants making opportunistic asylum claims have not only exacerbated the crisis at our southern border but also have harmed genuine asylum seekers, who are forced to wait years for relief because our system is clogged with meritless claims.”
The lawsuits over the administration’s bid to prevent Central American immigrants from seeking asylum is the latest legal bout between the Trump administration and immigrants’ rights advocates that mostly has resulted in judges throwing the book at the administration. Courts have blocked a policy of separating children from adults at the Mexican border and directed the administration to release minors from immigration detention without delay.
Tigar, who was appointed by former president Barack Obama in 2013, last year stopped the Trump administration from automatically denying asylum to immigrants who cross the U.S. border illegally.
The administration argues that a surge in immigration has severely strained the immigration system at the southern border. There are 900,000 cases pending before immigration judges, almost half of which contain an asylum application, according to the government. The large majority of the asylum claims by immigrants at the Mexican border turn out to be meritless, the U.S. claims.
The California case is East Bay Sanctuary Covenant v. Barr, 19-cv-04073, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). The Washington case is Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition v. Trump, 19-cv-2117, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
--With assistance from Andrew Harris.
To contact the reporters on this story: Joel Rosenblatt in San Francisco at jrosenblatt@bloomberg.net;Edvard Pettersson in Los Angeles at epettersson@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg, Steve Stroth
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