Proposed New Asylum Regulation Packed Full of Loopholes
Third-country transit rule is supposed to curb illegal immigration, but fails to make necessary reforms
By Elizabeth Jacobs on February 22, 2023
On February 21, 2023, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the agencies are issuing a new asylum regulation intended to deter illegal immigration at the southern border. The proposal, which critics have equated to similar Trump-era policy, is so fraught with exceptions and loopholes that the general public should expect few prospective migrants to actually be deterred.
The proposal is a part of the package of reforms the Biden administration announced on January 5, 2023 to prepare for the end of its use of Title 42. The Biden administration’s new regulation creates a “rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility” for aliens who either fail to enroll in one of the Biden administration’s new parole programs or use the CBP One app to schedule their arrival in the United States after traveling through a country (other than their country of origin) en route to the United States in which they could have applied for asylum.
This type of deterrence policy was originally implemented by the Trump administration in 2019, but ultimately vacated by a federal court. The Trump rule, referred to as the “third-country transit rule”, barred aliens from asylum eligibility if they transited through a third-country (a country other than their home country and the United States) without first seeking protection there.1
https://cis.org/Jacobs/Proposed-New-Asylum-Regulation-Packed-Full-Loopholes
