DHS and DOJ Delay Implementing Trump-Era Asylum Security Regulation (Again)
The regulation was designed as a Title 42 backup plan — why isn’t it being used?
By Elizabeth Jacobs on December 30, 2022
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Department of Justice (DOJ) announced this week that they will again postpone implementation of an asylum regulation that was finalized during the last weeks of the Trump administration. This regulation, called “Security Bars and Processing”, provided a “Title 8” alternative to “Title 42”, which is to say that it interpreted an existing immigration law that bars asylum eligibility to aliens who pose a “threat to the security of the United States” to include certain serious public health and contagious disease-related scenarios. The departments also announced that they are working to publish a new rule to solicit comments from the public regarding whether they should modify or rescind the rule.
Background. The security bars rule amended DHS and DOJ regulations to clarify that the departments may consider emergency public health concerns based on communicable disease when making a determination as to whether “there are reasonable grounds for regarding [an] alien as a danger to the security of the United States” and, thus, ineligible to be granted asylum or the protection of withholding of removal in the United States under Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) sections 208 and 241 and pertinent DHS and DOJ regulations.
Under this rule, application of this bar (as it relates to public health) would not be automatic. Officers would only apply this rule if, first, a communicable disease has triggered an ongoing declaration of a public health emergency under federal law, and an alien either exhibits symptoms indicating that he or she is afflicted with the disease or has otherwise been exposed to the disease, per guidance issued by the secretary or the attorney general, as appropriate.
https://cis.org/Jacobs/DHS-and-DOJ-Delay-Implementing-TrumpEra-Asylum-Security-Regulation-Again
