President Trump announced Thursday that his administration will only allow migrants to apply for asylum if they make their claims at U.S. ports of entry, prompting widespread rebuke from immigration advocates who say he’s playing politics with people’s lives.
The announcement flies in the face of U.S. and international law, which lets migrants fleeing war, violence, religious, racial, religious, social or political prosecution petition for asylum regardless of where they cross the border.
The reversal, which Trump said will be implemented via executive order next week, comes as the President wages an aggressive and fear-mongering campaign to keep a slow-moving, U.S.-bound caravan of Central American migrants in the headlines ahead of next week’s midterm elections.
“Under this plan the illegal aliens will no longer get a free pass into our country by lodging meritless claims in seeking asylum,” Trump said at the White House — without providing any evidence to back up the existence of such fraudulent applications.
“Instead, migrants seeking asylum will have to present themselves lawfully at a port of entry,” Trump said. “Those who choose to break our laws and enter illegally will no longer be able to use meritless claims in order to gain automatic admission into our country.”
Trump has also deployed more than 5,000 armed U.S. troops to the border and said Wednesday he may bump that number to 15,000. The caravan comprises less than 3,500 people and active-duty service members are prohibited by law from detaining or searching migrants.
In what critics saw as a disturbing call for violence, Trump intimated during his prepared remarks that he had instructed the deployed soldiers to shoot unarmed migrants if they throw rocks.
“Anybody throwing stones, rocks...we will consider that a firearm,” Trump said when asked about the use of fire power at the border. “Because there’s not much difference.”
Trump’s expected executive order on the matter will almost certainly face court challenges — but the President contended it will be “totally legal.”
“This is an invasion,” Trump said, referring to the caravan, which is mainly made up of families and children hoping to apply for asylum and fleeing violence and poverty.
Even though the caravan is nearly 1,000 miles away and isn’t expected to reach U.S. territory for several more weeks, Trump claimed the migrants are “rushing the border.”
Any migrants who cross the border illegally will be detained in “massive tent cities,” Trump said.
“We are not releasing them in our country any more,” the president said. “We have thousands of tents.”
Omar Jadwat, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s immigrants’ rights project, argued Trump’s proposal is illegal and speculated he only made it to curry favor with his most conservative supporters ahead of the midterms.
“The law is clear: you can apply for asylum at a port of entry or not at a port of entry regardless of what your status is,” Jadwat told the Daily News in a phone interview, referring to the Refugee Act passed by Congress in 1980.
Jadwat found Trump’s announcement all the more troubling because his administration faces a lawsuit that says it has been turning away credible asylum seekers at legal ports of entry.
“They’re essentially trying to make it impossible,” Jadwat said of the administration’s attempt to curtail asylum law. “Real people’s lives are involved here. Real claims from real people who are fleeing very real persecution and poverty. People’s lives are certainly going to be on the line.”
Some migrants allegedly refused at ports of entry, have tried entering the U.S. in unguarded areas, turning themselves over to border agents, and then making asylum claims. If Trump’s latest proposal materializes, that option would be annulled.
Frank Sharry, the executive director of immigration advocacy group America’s Voice, saw Trump’s announcement as an attempt to distract from more dire domestic issues.
“Trump and the Republican Party are so desperate to change the subject from the heinous murder of eleven American Jews in their place of worship and the GOP’s terrible record on healthcare and taxes, the President is calling a group of Central Americans fleeing violence and seeking safety a threat to national security,” Sharry said.
“It seems he wants the strongest nation on earth, a nation once known as the City on the Hill, to cower in fear. Ironically, the people walking towards our country still believe in the promise of America.”
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