A Washington Post report on Tuesday leaves the impression that the Trump administration has steeled itself and is taking a truly hard line on the gaping asylum hole in our immigration system.
That’s not the case. The administration merely distributed guidelines to border agents and asylum officers reiterating the requirements and process for immigrants who make “credible fear claims” when attempting to enter the country.
“The Trump administration has sent new guidelines to asylum officers, directing them to take a more skeptical and confrontational approach during interviews with migrants seeking refuge in the United States,” reads the Post’s report.
The “new guidelines” were nothing more than an overview of how border agents assess the initial credibility of a migrant claiming asylum during what is called a “credible fear interview.”
[Read: Trump orders changes to the asylum system in memo]
The guidelines, however, neither restrict nor liberate agents in any new way. They do make clear that determination of a migrants credibility is largely up to the officer administering the interview and that the burden of proof of credible fear is on the migrant. But that was always the case. The guidelines don’t even raise the standard for what constitutes “credible.”
Right now, if a migrant wants asylum, they simply need to appear convincing in the details of their story about the likelihood of being persecuted in their country of origin. If the migrant offers specific information that can be fact-checked by border officers, the guidelines remind them they should cross-check with government databases or publicly available information for verification.
If this is a new policy, the only shock should be that it wasn’t implemented long ago.
The Post report says border officers “will more aggressively challenge applicants whose claims of persecution contain discrepancies, and they will need to provide detailed justifications before concluding that an applicant has a well-found fear of harm if deported to their home country.”
This is, again, not so much an upheaval of the current process as it is a reminder of the authority asylum officers have — authority they should be using rather than immediately turning over every migrant to the overwhelmed immigration courts, which are currently straining under a backlog of nearly 1 million cases.
When the Post says border officials will “more aggressively challenge applicants” with a “confrontational approach,” the Post presumably means that applicants may have to answer actual questions about where they’re from and why they would be afraid to go back. The guidelines, which were distributed April 30, maintain that officers “are required by regulation to ‘conduct the interview in a non adversarial manner.’”
Yes, the guidelines state that if an applicant passes the initial credible fear screening, the officer to administer the next interview should account for any discrepancies in testimony that arise.
When there are tens of thousands of people showing up in the U.S. every month with dubious asylum claims, why would the process not be a more discerning one?
The bar for entry is still stunningly low. Testimony alone can do the trick, so long as it is “credible, is persuasive, and refers to specific facts sufficient to demonstrate that the applicant is a refugee.” Applicants need only convince an officer that returning to their country of origin would result in government sanctioned torture or persecution for their race, gender, religion, political beliefs or personal associations.
Asylum was never intended to be a guaranteed ticket into the country, although that’s what it’s become. The Washington Post wants you to believe the Trump administration is being gratuitously cruel and narrowing the window on who can qualify, but it’s not true. We would be better off if it were.
