Trump's new asylum rule is probably doomed. It's still incredibly dangerous.

President Trump on Monday summarily eliminated almost all asylum protections for Central Americans and other migrants seeking to enter the United States from the Southern border. But the president's move is legally questionable for a whole host of reasons, the most important being that he is attempting an end-run around Congress and doing by administrative fiat what he couldn't through normal legislative channels.

The rule, which will go into effect immediately, basically says that anyone — men, women, children, even unaccompanied minors — who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border unless they first apply for and be denied asylum in countries they pass through on the way. Migrants already in America, even if they entered without authorization between ports of entry, will be exempted. But, perversely, Central American migrants who listened to the administration and waited in Mexico to come in legally through an official port of entry will be out of luck. The administration's hope is that this change will end the recent rush of migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras — never mind that one reason for said rush is precisely that these migrants feared Trump would pull some stunt like this and wanted to beat it.

The question is this: Can Trump's new rule withstand the court challenges that are surely to come? Unlikely.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

For starters, this is not just a rule — it is an "interim final rule" jointly issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. As such, it dispensed with normal rule-making niceties — minimum notice requirements, comment periods, etc. — that are typically required before an administrative change of such magnitude. The administration says it can do this because the country is facing a border emergency. Attorney General William Barr insists the border is "overwhelmed by the burdens associated with apprehending and processing hundreds of thousands of aliens."

To the extent that border resources are "overwhelmed," it is because of the administration's zero tolerance policy. Under this policy, the administration puts everyone — even asylum seekers who pass the initial "credible fear" screening — in detention rather than releasing them to wait with their friends and family in the country while immigration courts hear their asylum claims, as previous administrations have done. So this "emergency" is of the Trump administration's own making.

But the administration has repeatedly tried to sell the emergency argument to Congress in order to persuade it to close the alleged loopholes in asylum law (such as the 1997 Flores settlement, which requires migrant parents with kids to be released from detention within 20 days) that it claims have made America a migrant magnet. So far, Congress hasn't bought any of this. But if Congress ain't buying it, the courts probably won't either. As Margaret Stock, an immigration lawyer with the Federalist Society, told The Week, President Harry Truman couldn't even persuade the Supreme Court that the Korean War was enough of an emergency that he could seize private steel mills to pre-empt a strike and keep wartime production going. The Trump administration's asylum move will raise similar concerns, Stock notes.

Furthermore, the new rule will run afoul of long-standing international and American law requiring that asylum seekers be given a due hearing. America is required to hear migrants' cases — that is, unless they are coming through countries with whom the U.S. has a Safe Third Country Agreement. Such a country has to offer a similar level of safety, security, and due process as the United States. The only country that currently has such an agreement with America is Canada. The agreement makes it incumbent upon Canada to consider the asylum petition of migrants on its soil rather than just letting them into the United States. Only if Canada denies their petition can they apply for asylum in America.

The administration is trying to strong-arm Mexico and Guatemala into signing similar agreements.

Even if the administration can strong-arm Mexico and Guatemala into signing similar agreements. This would require these countries to offer permanent asylum to migrants, not just temporarily warehouse them as Mexico is currently doing. But even if these countries agree, U.S. courts are unlikely to be convinced that the new rule is kosher. Why? Because these countries, particularly Guatemala, aren't "safe."

The U.S. government's own assessment shows that Guatemala, through which migrants from El Salvador and Honduras must pass when moving north, is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. Women in Guatemala face extremely high rates of murder, and children are often targeted for sex trafficking or forced to join gangs. Things are so bad that in the past nine months, around 190,000 Guatemalans fled to neighboring countries — and about half of the Central American migrants flocking to America are in fact Guatemalans. This means that even under the new asylum rules and a Safe Third Country agreement with Guatemala, the administration couldn't send fleeing Guatemalans back to their country because that would be refoulement, or a forcible return to an active danger zone, which is legally prohibited. And if America can't send Guatemalans back to their own country because it is too dangerous, then how can it send Hondurans and El Salvadorians there?

If fleeing Central American migrants are "overwhelming" America's border to the point of a crisis, what will happen to Mexico and Guatemala, far less prosperous and stable countries, if they are forced to absorb all of them?

Trump thinks he can make America safe by turning it into a fortress. In fact, he is creating the conditions for major continental upheavals that will turn a fake emergency into a horrendous real one.

Courts are going to have a hard time keeping a straight face listening to some of the administration's tortuous legal rationales. So why is Trump doing this? He is political grandstanding to stir up his base and keep alive the notion that America is under siege. He hopes to translate a legal loss into a political victory — asylum seekers, America, and the region be damned.