Immigration officer blows whistle on 'morally objectionable' Trump asylum policy
A new anonymous whistleblower has accused the Trump administration of requiring U.S. asylum officers to enforce an illegal and immoral policy “clearly designed to further this administration's racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States.”
The policy in question is the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, the controversial program requiring that most asylum seekers who attempt to request protections in the United States via the southern border be returned to Mexico to await their immigration proceedings there rather than inside the U.S.
Under the MPP, which was first announced at the end of last year, more than 50,000 migrants have been sent to dangerous Mexican border towns to await asylum proceedings in the U.S. — most of which are being carried out in tent courts on the U.S. side of the border, to which both attorneys and the press have reported being denied access. Besides due process concerns, immigration attorneys and advocates say the program places migrants in dangerous and inhumane conditions, with many migrants in the program reporting that they’ve been subjected to kidnappings, rape and other violent crimes south of the border. Many others simply disappear and fail to show up for hearings.
The whistleblower is an asylum officer who recently resigned from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency within the Department of Homeland Security that oversees the legal immigration system, including asylum. In an email written in August to USCIS management, the asylum officer provided a detailed explanation of why he or she refused to participate further in the MPP, starting with the assertion that “the program violates U.S. immigration law.”
The Refugee Act of 1980 provides that anyone physically present in the United States, even if they entered without papers and regardless of their immigration status, can request asylum.
The email, which was first published Tuesday by the Washington Post, was provided to Yahoo News by the office of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.). It will be part of a comprehensive report on the Trump administration’s asylum policies that Merkley’s office plans to release this week.
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