While migrant families seek shelter from violence, Trump administration narrows path to asylum

“While migrant families seek shelter from violence, Trump administration narrows path to asylum” was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

For nearly all of its history, the United States has welcomed the world’s most vulnerable: men, women and children fleeing violence, persecution and death in their home countries.

But under President Donald Trump, immigration lawyers and historians say, the legal path to safety in this country is being systematically narrowed, a process that started long before family separations drew international attention to the nation’s southern border.

As federal officials clamp down on asylum, citing a need to root out abuse — and as Trump himself complains of drawn-out court proceedings that grant legal rights to migrants — concerns are mounting that the administration is undermining the country’s long-standing commitment to sheltering the helpless.

Immigration officials have set up de facto blockades at government-sanctioned ports of entry, where asylum-seekers attempting to enter the country the “right” way have been delayed or turned away. Women seeking refuge from domestic abuse are reportedly being denied asylum because the U.S. attorney general decided they rarely qualify for safe harbor. A federal “zero tolerance” policy mandates criminal prosecution even for those seeking asylum — a perfectly legal process. And some asylum-seekers have been detained for so long awaiting court hearings that they’re giving up on their claims altogether.

Those changes “all add up together to a major effort to close down the asylum system,” said Denise Gilman, director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas at Austin. “… And I think the result will be that many legitimate asylum-seekers — people who are in grave danger — will in fact be returned to their home countries and risk beating, torture or death.”

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said the administration’s efforts target widespread abuse of the asylum process, citing the nearly tenfold increase in the number of U.S. asylum claims made by apprehended border crossers in the last decade — from less than 13,000 applications in the 2010 federal fiscal year to more than 119,000 last fiscal year. He’s also bemoaned an increase in migrants failing to show up to their asylum hearings after being released into the country; deportation orders in such cases doubled between 2012 and 2017.

“The system is being gamed,” Sessions said in an October speech. “The [asylum] process was intended to be a lifeline for persons facing serious persecution. But it has become an easy ticket to illegal entry into the United States.”

But to immigration lawyers and advocates, the rising number of asylum claims is far from proof of abuse. Instead, it’s an indication that the process is working.

Among the influx of families seeking asylum are thousands of Central Americans from the violence-ridden countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. They are fathers, mothers and children who are desperate to escape the bloody gang conflict that’s swallowed up their streets and the death sentences many would face if they stayed.

“If the numbers get too big … they start saying, ‘Well, this isn’t legitimate. These aren’t real asylum-seekers,’” said Michelle Brané, director of the migrant rights and justice program for the Women’s Refugee Commission, a national advocacy group. “Anytime you have an actual serious conflict or crisis, the numbers are going to be high. Those high numbers are exactly what that process was created to address.”

The asylum process was in the Trump administration’s crosshairs months before millions of international eyes were trained on the family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border. Since the early days of his presidency, immigrant rights advocates say, Trump has been working to steadily limit a well-established, legal path to refuge in the United States.

Take it from his own tweets: Trump has suggested migrants do not deserve due process under U.S. laws.

On June 24: “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”

On June 30: “When people come into our Country illegally, we must IMMEDIATELY escort them back out without going through years of legal maneuvering.”

And on July 5: “When people, with or without children, enter our Country, they must be told to leave without our Country being forced to endure a long and costly trial. Tell the people ‘OUT,’ and they must leave, just as they would if they were standing on your front lawn.”

“Credible fear”

For more than a century, the United States has offered some form of refuge to individuals facing persecution in their home countries. But the current procedure for seeking asylum wasn’t codified until four decades ago, when Congress passed the Refugee Act of 1980. That law ensures migrants can make their case by demonstrating persecution or fear of persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

The asylum process involves a maze of detention centers and courtrooms:

But since Trump took office in January 2017, that process has begun to devolve.

It started at the bridges. Federal officials instructed asylum-seekers to cross the border at those sanctioned ports of entry, telling them if they did it the “right” way, they wouldn’t be separated from their children the way other migrants were after illegal border crossings. But recently, families who went this route have been