The Trump administration this week announced a new rule that would update asylum regulations in order to prohibit asylum to migrants with certain criminal convictions.
The new rule was announced by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security. It would remove an individual’s asylum eligibility if he or she has been convicted of a felony or offenses related to drunk driving, street gang activity, false identification (including receiving public benefits), and illegal re-entry.
Additionally, those charged with domestic violence offenses will be barred from claiming asylum even if they were not convicted.
This is the latest move by the administration to limit the abuse of the asylum system, which has been seen by many illegal migrants as their get-into-America-free card. The rule is expected to keep American citizens safer while reducing the flow of new people into the country.
Back in June, for instance, the administration announced a rule that lengthens the time asylum seekers must wait until applying for employment authorization from 150 days to a year. The rule altogether bars those who crossed into the country illegally. It’s a logical move, considering that many who try to enter the United States by claiming asylum are not really in need of asylum, but are in fact economic migrants who want to work for cheap in America.
It remains to be seen whether the latest rule will be legally challenged, as several of President Trump’s immigration policies have been.
As AP notes, opposition is already mounting:
The rule to be published Wednesday in the Federal Register and signed by Attorney General William Barr rejects much of the criticism since it was first proposed in December, including that the authority to declare crimes gang-related was too broad and prone to error. The administration deflected criticism that DUI wasn’t serious enough to merit automatic denial.
Advocacy groups criticized the move.
“The administration is showing needless cruelty by layering these new bars on an asylum system which already has been decimated since Trump entered office,” said Heidi Altman, the National Immigrant Justice Center’s policy director.
The Supreme Court announced Monday that it will hear two key cases related to the “Remain in Mexico” policy — which keeps migrants in Mexico until their immigration case can be heard — and to the construction of the wall at the southern border.
In Wolf v. Innovation Law Lab, the Trump administration is appealing lower-court rulings invalidating its “Migrant Protection Protocols,” commonly referred to as the “Remain in Mexico” program.
The policy resulted in tent courtrooms being set up in places such as Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, where migrants could have their cases processed as the policy was expanded in the summer thanks to greater cooperation with Mexico.
Administration officials said the new program helped end the practice of “catch-and-release” and removed a pull factor that was drawing migrants from the south.
However, a U.S. District Court issued a nationwide universal injunction blocking the policy, which the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld in February. The Ninth Circuit claimed there were several issues with the policy, such as claims that asylum-seekers were facing discrimination and violence in Mexico. The court also said the Trump administration did not follow notice-and-comment procedures set out by the Administrative Procedure Act.
Meanwhile, the case of Trump v. Sierra Club involves a challenge to the president’s constitutional authority when transferring military funds to help build the border wall. The underlying question is how much discretion courts should have when the president seeks to repurpose $2.5 billion in military funds in the face of what he determines to be a “national emergency” — the unchecked influx of migrants and illegal drugs pouring into America from south of the border.
It seems unbelievable that the Left would actually oppose prohibiting entry to felons and those guilty of violent crimes, but they abandoned common sense long ago.
Mass migration makes America less safe and more poor, and that’s exactly what the globalist-socialist alliance wants, for poverty and chaos have always made the perfect breeding ground for tyranny.
With the Supreme Court likely to make decisions on these key immigration cases in the near future, it’s more imperative now than ever before that patriots encourage President Trump and the Senate to fill the empty seat with a constitutionalist as soon as possible.