U.S. asylum officers have already condemned the Trump administration’s inhumane attacks on asylum-seekers and their families, with one officer saying that her colleagues have called Asylum Ban 2.0 “racist and illegal.” Now officers are now going further, BuzzFeed News reports, by taking their condemnations to a federal appeals court.
Hundreds of asylum and refugee officers have filed a legal brief calling on the court to block the Trump administration’s ban, saying in the brief that “they took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States,” but are now being asked by the U.S. government to “carry out a policy that defies our nation’s asylum laws and that rips at the moral fabric of our country."
Trump’s inhumane ban essentially blocks asylum at the southern border not just for thousands of Central Americans, but also for “Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Chinese, and others who may be religious / ethnic minorities being persecuted, since many of them have increasingly come to the border through Mexico,” said immigration reporter Tanvi Misra.
While a federal judge last month blocked this policy, the Supreme Court lifted that hold while the case continues. That decision, the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota said at the time, “will be a death sentence for many of the vulnerable asylum seekers now seeking safety,” pushing them to try to enter the U.S. through more dangerous routes. “Many will die or disappear in the process,” said La Unión del Pueblo Entero. We know this because anti-asylum policies are already killing.
“The Third Country Transit Bar is the most inhumane and counterproductive measure yet,” National CIS Council 119, the union which filed the brief and represents thousands of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services workers, said. “It is designed to slam the asylum door shut on virtually all refugees—including unaccompanied minors—entering the United States through our nation’s southern border.”