Sergio Franco, of Ecuador, holds his daughter as he waits to apply for asylum, Wednesday, June 5, 2024, near Dulzura, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull) On Tuesday, the Trump administration introduced a new rule that diverts people who are applying for asylum straight to deportation court. The new rule, which is being billed as an “efficiency” and went into effect immediately, is an attempt to multiply deportations by plucking people who applied for asylum out of an administrative line and dumping them into mass deportation hearings without time to prepare their cases.
The U.S. humanitarian protection system is not just collapsing. It is being systematically attacked from within by an administration that is willing to send people to be tortured in a foreign prison, detain children on a toxic former military base and end their legal representation and deport Iranian women to war zones while sharing their confidential case information on activists with the Iranian government.
But faced with the evidence that this administration is prepared to send people to their deaths, many politicians and commentators continue to push for policies that severely limit humanitarian protection. This is, at best, tone deaf in our current moment.
A new report from my organization, the American Civil Liberties Union, explains that rules limiting access to asylum by capping how many people can apply and where, or making the standard harder are expedient and arbitrary policies that do not update the asylum system or border processing. They are merely proposals to limit the number of people who can lawfully seek access to protection.
And right now, advancing restrictionist proposals — despite evidence of their past failure, and at a time when the Trump administration is attacking all lawful immigration — is not just lazy; it’s dangerous.
Several years ago, I met a woman who begged U.S. border agents not to send her back to Guatemala, where she feared for her life. But she was deported anyway. Once there, her son was murdered, and she was kidnapped and gang-raped by those who took her son.
When previous closed-border policies like Title 42 were in effect, numerous people were preyed upon by organized criminal gangs while they waited in Mexico for a chance to see safety. Human Rights First documented at least 13,480 reports of murder, torture, kidnapping, rape and other violent attacks on people stuck in Mexico while this policy was in effect.
Sacrificing these individuals to bring a pretense of order to the border is both callous and completely unresponsive to the need for durable solutions for border processing.
The constantly-recycled restriction policies have never addressed the main reason people come to the border — the lack of lawful pathways for people to reunite with family, seek work and get protection. Nor do they help the communities or industries who want immigrants to come here.
The reality is that people who flee tremendous violence are, yes, seeking protection, but they also do want and expect to support themselves and their families when they come to the United States. Indeed, these individuals have been contributing tens of billions to our economy while supporting their families.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R), for example, has warned that the potential deportation of 10,000 Haitian residents from his state will not only separate families but create enormous harm to the local economy. Already, in cities like Miami and New York, once-vibrant neighborhoods like Little Haiti now sit unusually quiet, as fear keeps community members indoors, away from their jobs.
Americans are watching their neighbors disappear. Parents are forced to leave their children alone in the U.S. rather than expose them to violence, conflict and other dangers if deported. With roughly 1.3 million people losing humanitarian protection and plans to detain asylum seekers and others overseas, it is only going to get worse.
This is the moment for politicians to defend asylum and finally engage with policies that create a safe and humane border arrivals system. That means expanded durable pathways that include asylum, modernized processing at the border, support for and coordination with state and local communities receiving newly arrived immigrants and investments in courts to address the backlogs.
Rushing people into deportation tribunals and cutting off protection has never been defensible, nor has it created lasting solutions that meet U.S. legal commitments, community needs or economic interests.
And meanwhile, the risks are not speculative.
Just last week, a man deported to Guatemala and his wife — who self-deported to join him despite her pending asylum court date — were found shot dead in a field, their infant alive beside them. Hundreds of thousands of our neighbors are bracing for possible deportation to Haiti, where parts of the country have been reduced to a “kill zone” according to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. On Friday, children faced the possibility of losing their lawyers and going through deportation alone, potentially to traffickers.
This isn’t the time to recycle cruel failed policies. We are hurtling towards a humanitarian catastrophe. We need Congress to act now to protect longtime residents facing deportation to danger, reject looming bills that would gut asylum and protections for kids, and finally, build lawful pathways that can actually fix our immigration system.
Sarah Mehta is deputy director of policy and government affairs for immigration at the American Civil Liberties Union.
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