The miserable, fascist rats:
The Trump administration on Monday moved to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants in a major escalation of the president’s battle to tamp down the number of people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register, asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone. [snip]
The policy is almost certain to face a legal challenge. U.S. law allows refugees to request asylum when they arrive at the U.S. regardless of how they did so, but there is an exception for those who have come through a country considered to be “safe.” But the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs asylum law, is vague on how a country is determined “safe”; it says “pursuant to a bilateral or multilateral agreement.”
Right now, the U.S. has such an agreement, known as a “safe third country,” only with Canada. Under a recent agreement with Mexico, Central American countries were considering a regional compact on the issue, but nothing has been decided. Guatemalan officials were expected in Washington on Monday, but apparently a meeting between Trump and Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales was cancelled amid a court challenge in Guatemala over whether the country could agree to a safe third with the U.S.Let's hope the policy is challenged successfully, though if it ends up in the Republican Supreme Court, their affinity for Trump's white nationalism would likely result in a bad decision.
Of course, half of migrants to the U.S. are Guatemalans fleeing one of the most violent, poverty- stricken countries in Latin America, so this presumably won't affect a large part of the flow, since Mexico isn't showing signs of signing such an agreement either (Canada is our only neighbor who has). Moreover, conditions in Guatemala are as bad or worse than in the countries the migrants are fleeing; the corrupt Guatemalan government couldn't handle a refugee influx from El Salvador or Honduras, so this would be a disaster waiting to happen, should the Guatemalan government proceed with the agreement.
While at the moment this amounts to yet another gesture to Trump's knuckle- dragging base that he hates poor, brown people as much as they do, leave it to the white nationalist fascists to continue to pressure these weak governments to make a horrible situation even worse.
