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With the fog of impeachment and the chaos presidency, it's easy to lose sight of things. Kids in cages continues to be awful, but many terrible developments in immigration. The modern US asylum system crafted after WWII atrocities no longer exists. It has been gutted 1/
from the inside out, not through legislation which requires congressional acquiesce, but through Executive Orders and obscure administrative rule changes. Here is a summary of the lowlights. The first big change was metering, the policy that only so many migrants 2/
can apply for asylum protection each day at ports of entry along the SW border. Border Patrol is posted at crossings to put people on a waiting list, sometimes weeks to months, to have them wait in Mexico for even the opportunity to *ask* for asylum protection. 3/
In June, NPR reported that there were 19,000 migrants waiting in Mexico to apply for asylum protection. Waiting outside of the country for one, makes obtaining legal counsel far more difficult, impacting one's claim. https://www.npr.org/2019/06/29/737268856/metering-at-the-border 4/
Along with metering is the Migration Policy Protocol, a bland name for a policy that keeps 50,000 migrants, mostly Central Americans but also nationals, in Mexico to wait for their immigration court date even AFTER they have formally submitted an asylum request. 5/
A reminder that showing up to apply for asylum w/o authorization or documents at a US border is protected under domestic and international law, ostensibly. A bottleneck is building up in Mexico Here's a summary of MPP: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/asylum-seekers-wait-mexico-trump-admin-touts-drop-border 6/
Migrants are in squalid camps and tents for months at a time, subjected to kidnappings, rapes, extortion in Mexico. The Trump Administration's Steven Miller has said he wants to make the cost of applying for asylum so high that people won't even apply. 7/
The misery on the border has not only been documented by journalists, but also one academic study which interviewed 600 migrants waiting under MPP in Mexico. See Professor Wong's thread summarizing the research: https://twitter.com/TomWongPhD/status/1189265383301230594?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1189265383301230594&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Flawprofessors.typepad.com%2Fimmigration%2F2019%2F10%2Fnew-data-and-report-on-remain-in-mexico.html 8/
Asylum officers, who are trained to adjudicate these cases, have loudly protested this scheme as undermining the whole purpose of asylum protections. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-11-15/asylum-officers-revolt-against-trump-policies-they-say-are-immoral-illegal 9/
Meanwhile Trump is also rigging the process from the inside by requiring annual quotas for Immigration Judges to adjudicate cases and stacking the immigration courts with restrictionists. https://www.rollcall.com/news/congress/doj-changed-hiring-promote-restrictive-immigration-judges 10/
Not to be outdone, Trump has also now authorized Border Patrol Agents to conduct the initial credible fear interviews instead of asylum officers who are training in international law and non-adversarial interview techniques. Border Patrol has an enforcement mentality, 11/
they don't perceive asylum applicants the same way as asylum officers who have received different training. And that is exactly the point. https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2019-09-19/border-patrol-interview-migrant-families-credible-fear 12/
The Trump Administration has made more than 100 administrative rule changes to the immigration system. The effect of most of these changes are not evident to all except for a handful of immigration experts who understand the workings of the complex machine 13/
It's not accurate to say Trump is a weak president if you measure influence by only legislative achievements. Trump has very effectively dismantled the asylum protection by taking multiple crucial bricks out of the wall. It's an "achievement" of sorts. FIN/
PS: I forgot the agreement reached with Guatemala to process asylum claims there, a laughable proposition because the country doesn't have the admin capacity to do it & they also have high crime rates that their nationals are fleeing. https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/11/20/world/americas/20reuters-usa-immigration-guatemala-asylum.html
