The US will no longer allow people who enter the country illegally to claim asylum, officials said on Thursday.
The restriction on asylum claims will seek to address what a senior administration official called the “historically unparalleled abuse of our immigration system” along the border with Mexico.
The new rule was published by the US Department of Homeland Security and was expected to get US President Donald Trump’s signature.
According to the rule, Trump has authority to restrict illegal immigration “if he determines it to be in the national interest.”
The “rule applies this important principle to aliens who violate such a suspension or restriction regarding the southern border,” US Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and US Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said.
Those seeking political or other kinds of asylum will be heard exclusively at the border crossings, administration officials told journalists.
This is expected to put a dent in those streaming into an already overburdened system, officials said, adding that there is a backlog of more than 700,000 cases in the immigration courts.
Many politicians on both sides of the aisle agree that the US immigration system is hugely inefficient and unable to cope with demand.
Administration officials say that anyone who gets across the border can request asylum and subsequently often vanish while their case sits in the court system.
“The vast majority of these applications eventually turn out to be non-meritorious,” a senior administration official said, asking not to be identified.
Fewer than 10 percent of cases result in asylum being granted, the government says.
Human rights campaigners and others say that by restricting asylum seekers to the narrow border crossing points — which are already under enormous pressure — the government is effectively shutting the door on people who might truly be fleeing for their lives.
“The government cannot abdicate its responsibility towards migrants fleeing harm,” the New York Immigration Coalition advocacy group said. “We will resist this.”
However, the administration official said that “what we’re attempting to do is trying to funnel credible fear claims, or asylum claims, through the ports of entry where we are better resourced.”
That way, courts will “handle those claims in an expeditious and efficient manner, so that those who do actually require an asylum protection get those protections,” he said.
US border patrols have registered more than 400,000 illegal border crossers so far this year, Homeland Security said.
In the past five years, the number of those requesting asylum has increased by 2,000 percent, it said.
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