Attorney General Barr orders immigration judges to deny bail for migrants seeking asylum

(Image credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

last updated 17 April 2019

On Tuesday, Attorney General William Barr ordered immigration judges to stop allowing bail for asylum seekers who have already established "a credible fear of persecution or torture" in their home country, a policy reversal that could lead thousands of immigrants to be detained for months or years until their cases are heard. "Basically if you pass the initial asylum screening you can now be indefinitely detained," immigration attorney Eileen Blessinger explained to CNN. Under the new policy, asylum seekers could only be released from detention if the Department of Homeland Security grants parole, an authority it uses sparingly.

The ruling won't take effect for 90 days, and the ACLU and other groups have already promised legal challenges. Barr, as attorney general, oversees immigration courts, which are part of the Justice Department, not the judicial branch. But "our Constitution does not allow the government to lock up asylum seekers without basic due process," said the ACLU's Omar Jadwat. "We'll see the administration in court."

On CNN Tuesday night, Chris Cuomo agreed that Barr and President Trump are "going to have constitutional problems with this" order, including habeas corpus and due-process issues. But he painted it as a political, not legal, decision, and explained why it's mostly smoke and mirrors to look tough on immigration.

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Don't "be faked out by this move," Cuomo advised. "They're letting people go not out of any sense of compassion or humanity, they're doing it because they have to. And you can tell the judges whatever they want, they don't have any place to keep them. So this is a little bit of a distraction to show harshness when they don't have any solution to the real problem, which is accommodating the flow. He's got nothing for that."

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.