President Trump is doing the right thing with a new executive order that aims to get some sense of control over the asylum chaos happening at the southern border. But he and each one of his supporters should remember that every executive action is only guaranteed as long as the executive is in office.
That is to say, when Trump leaves office, which could be as early as January 2021, so will most, if not all of those unilateral policies he’s signing, the most important of which are getting bogged down by liberal judges anyway.
The administration on Monday announced that it would soon implement a new rule requiring that migrants wanting to claim asylum in the U.S. must first do so in either their home country or a second country. Anyone who crosses illegally into the U.S. to claim asylum, without having already done so in a separate nation, will be ineligible.
The logic is simple. The vast majority of asylum claims are coming from Central Americans fleeing poverty and gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. To get to the southern border, they first have to pass through Mexico, meaning they would have already escaped whatever real or perceived persecution in their home countries. Keeping them at a distance would ease up the strain they’re currently putting on Border Patrol resources and law enforcement.
Liberals are certain to file a complaint against the directive in the nearest friendly court circuit, and Trump has had only mixed success with his executive actions as they make their way through the judicial system.
Democrats aren’t interested in solving the asylum problem that incentivizes everyone south of Texas to show up unannounced on U.S. soil, likely to never see deportation. Trump gets bits of credit for trying to do it on his own. But just like so much of what former President Barack Obama did while in office, it will be easily undone by the next person who takes Trump’s place.
It’s harder to work with Congress to make it permanent. That’s the point, and it’s what Trump should be trying to do if he’s serious about ending the asylum problem.
