🚨 @DHSgov just began its latest attack on asylum. This proposed regulation would use COVID to effectively pull the United States out of the UN Protocol on Refugees, barring protection (asylum/withholding) to anyone coming from a country with an outbreak.
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This new proposal would strip eligibility for both asylum AND withholding of removal from anyone who'd recently been in a country with an "infectious disease" designated by the government. Only the Convention Against Torture would stand between ICE and deportation to harm.
Under this new proposed rule, the Trump administration wants to declare asylum seekers to be a "danger to the United States" if they come from a country where COVID or another "contagious or infectious disease" is "prevalent or epidemic."
Long story short? The death of asylum.
Long story short? The death of asylum.
Last month, the Trump administration proposed another rule which would also end asylum. The key difference between that rule (see thread below) and this one?
The new one also applies to withholding of removal—a harder-to-win backstop form of asylum.
The new one also applies to withholding of removal—a harder-to-win backstop form of asylum.
Throughout the war on asylum, DOJ/DHS attorneys have repeatedly insisted in court that they aren't violating international law because they're keeping open the possibility of withholding of removal. They say that's all the UN Protocol requires.
Now they want to kill that too.
Now they want to kill that too.
Like the June asylum rule, DHS/DOJ are only giving us 30 days to respond to their new outrage.
The comment period for the first attack on asylum ends next Wednesday—I'll be tweeting links later n how to comment.
For this rule, we'll have until Monday, August 10 to respond.
The comment period for the first attack on asylum ends next Wednesday—I'll be tweeting links later n how to comment.
For this rule, we'll have until Monday, August 10 to respond.
Missing from this proposed rule is even a single mention of the UN Protocol on Refugees, international law which the United States is a party to.
DOJ has repeatedly told federal courts over the past three years that we're bound by the Protocol.
Today they don't even mention it.
DOJ has repeatedly told federal courts over the past three years that we're bound by the Protocol.
Today they don't even mention it.
The rule contains an insulting lie about ICE detention facilities, claiming that ICE has "protocols ... to halt the spread of disease," and that the real risk from COVID is that it "could impair ICE's ability to operate its facilities at normal capacity."
Here's the reality.
Here's the reality.
This regulation would also go far beyond COVID-19, as @TalKopan points out. It could allow the Trump administration to designate any other infectious disease as a danger to the United States and use that as an excuse to bar all asylum protections.
And speaking of insulting lies, in the rule here the Trump administration claims that the United States "otherwise has been making progress within its borders to stem the further spread of the pandemic."
Is this a joke to them?
Is this a joke to them?
And here @charanya_k flags another major change in the proposed asylum rule. They want to give DHS the ability to send people to a third country rather than refer them to immigration court for a hearing on protection under the Convention Against Torture.
And @charanya_k also points out that the new asylum rule ADMITS that it's inconsistent with the asylum regulation that they proposed last month. How are we supposed to respond?
