President Barack Obama said in 2014 that seeking asylum in the United States was “narrowly defined,” and likely wouldn’t apply to most people seeking asylum at the southern border. He said in a press conference, “Under U.S. law, we admit a certain number of refugees from all around the world based on some pretty narrow criteria. Typically, refugee status is not granted just based on economic need or because a family lives in a bad neighborhood or poverty. It’s typically defined, fairly narrowly. You have a state, for example, that was targeting a political activist and they need to get out of the country for fear of prosecution or even death.”

Obama’s interpretation of U.S. immigration and asylum law contradicts the feelings of many current Democratic lawmakers who have called for the decriminalization of unauthorized border crossings, the closing of migrant detention centers, and the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.