U.S. gov’t escalates war on migrants

topic:	Humans
located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

This past week has seen an escalation of the U.S. government’s attack on migrants, as it issued a series of draconian policies specifically targeting Central American migrants and significantly reducing their protections under the law and access to the asylum procedure.

Yesterday, it has been announced that a new executive order would enable the government to immediately deport migrants who fail to prove that they have been present in the U.S. for more than two years, without obtaining a court order.

Thus far, quick deportation proceedings without approval by an immigration court applied strictly to migrants who were detained within 100 miles of the border and have been on U.S. soil for less than two weeks. Migrants apprehended elsewhere in the country or who were in the U.S. for more than two weeks were granted access to the courts and were entitled to legal representation.

With the new policy in place, however, any migrant who fails to establish they have been in the U.S. for over two years would be subjected to immediate deportation without seeing a judge. The policy is expected to influence hundreds of thousands of migrants, particularly as it may be difficult for many undocumented immigrants to procure proof of their residency.

In an interview for BBC, Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer from the Migration Policy Institute, stated, "When you're apprehended on the street or at a factory, it's obviously not easy to establish with evidence that you've been here for more than two years because you're not carrying all your documents with you."

This most recent policy ensued one from last Tuesday, according to which migrants who passed through a third country before entering the U.S. would be barred from applying for asylum unless they prove they had applied for asylum in the third country and were rejected. This means that Central American migrants would have to first apply for asylum in either Guatemala or Mexico (depending on their country of origin) and be denied before they can legally file for asylum in the United States.

According to this new policy, which is predicted to affect tens of thousands of migrants, even people with solid asylum claims would be automatically denied simply because they did not go through the asylum process in the third country.

The U.S. currently has a similar agreement with Canada, seeing as it’s deemed a “safe” country for migrants. The same cannot be said for Mexico or Guatemala, however, where many migrants fail to find protection.

This policy does not only violate the 1951 UN Refugee Convention (and has thus been criticized by the UN Refugee Agency), but also contradicts the U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act, whose first asylum statute stipulates that “Any alien who is physically present in the United States or who arrives in the United States (whether or not at a designated port of arrival and including an alien who is brought to the United States after having been interdicted in international or United States waters), irrespective of such alien’s status, may apply for asylum”.

Both policies are due to be fought against in court. Yet, in order to truly challenge the administration’s war on migrants, such legal battles must take place in tandem with consistent and extensive public pressure.