These proposed changes are not the only ways in which the Trump administration has nipped and hacked at the United States' asylum laws and rules. On April 17, Attorney General William Barr decided that asylum seekers who are in detention but who have passed their initial interviews would not be eligible for bond, opening the possibility of indefinite detention for asylum seekers. The week before that, the administration announced plans that would make border patrol agents (instead of US Citizenship and Immigration Services) responsible for initial interviews with asylees -- with the intention of reducing the total number that are found eligible.
These proposed changes, along with the others that have preceded them, will all but eliminate asylum as a legal option to anyone fleeing persecution. When asylum seekers arrive on US soil and make a claim for asylum, they are likely destitute, having fled for their lives. The reason that no fees were previously required for asylum applications was because of the commonsense acknowledgment that if one person was prevented from applying owing to the fees, it would be a gross injustice.
Even if asylees are able to pay the fees that Trump has asked for, many more hurdles will await them. Under a new pilot program, asylum applicants could then face questioning by a border patrol guard who will evaluate whether they have a "credible fear of persecution." The problem with this new proposed plan, which empowers border guards at the expense of US customs officials, is that it puts law enforcement officials in the position of interpreting and applying the law as well.
Its equivalent would be to make a police officer who makes an arrest the judge at the first court hearing. To an administration that wants to restrict immigration at all costs, however, that sounds like a perfect plan.
The fact that Trump's memo proposes that asylum claims must be adjudicated in 180 days also makes work permits unavailable to those who have filed claims. Under current law, asylum seekers can apply to obtain a work permit if 150 days have passed since their application was submitted. And they are eligible to receive the permit any time after 180 days.
This will not be an option because of another rule already promulgated by Barr. Until a few weeks ago, asylum applicants who passed the initial interview that determines "credible fear of persecution" were eligible to post bond and be released while their application was being adjudicated. As mentioned, under Barr's most recent announcement, these asylum seekers are no longer eligible to apply for bonds. If they are no longer eligible for bail, they will continue to be detained -- and, if so, they will not be applying for employment.
Even if the determination takes more than the 180 days Trump has proposed, there is nothing to stop them from being indefinitely detained until their case is decided.
Such a delay could be very possible, given the current case load in US immigration courts. According to TRAC Reports, a Syracuse University research and data program, US immigration courts currently face a backlog of over 800,000 cases, and the average adjudication time is 736 days.
These recent changes, some already in effect, come after the Trump administration's systematic effort to narrow the criteria of what constitutes asylum (in US law, asylum requires the demonstration of past persecution or establishing a well-founded fear of persecution based on "race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.") Last summer, then Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced that those fleeing domestic violence and gang violence would no longer be considered eligible for asylum. Currently, Barr is considering whether membership in a family can continue to count as "membership in a particular social group." Given his seeming antipathy toward asylum seekers, it is very likely that he will not.
All of this means the annihilation of asylum as a legal remedy for the many who flee persecution each year. Notably, statistics of asylum denials between 2012 and 2017 show that the top ten countries from which asylum applications were denied were all majority non-white countries. With the new asylum rules in place, this situation will only be exacerbated. A United States that thumbs its nose at the world's tortured is the sort of country visualized by white nationalists and that the Trump administration is systematically making a reality.
Cleverly hiding xenophobia under legalese and statutory mumbo jumbo are tools that the Trump administration have deployed to detract from the fact that the possibility of asylum, as it has existed in the United States, is being virtually eliminated for most of the world's persecuted people. Instead of a safe refuge, Trump's fear-filled America has only detention centers and denials to offer these heroic souls.
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