The Associated Press first reported this morning that the Trump regime is taking executive action to more or less end asylum as we know it and rewrite the rules in violation of current federal law.
Federal law says that anyone may apply for asylum inside the United States regardless of how they got here, but Trump wants to restrict the process so it will apply to almost no one.
According to a new rule published in the Federal Register, asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border. The rule, expected to go into effect Tuesday, also applies to children who have crossed the border alone.
There are some exceptions: If someone has been trafficked, if the country the migrant passed through did not sign one of the major international treaties that govern how refugees are managed (though most Western countries have signed them) or if an asylum-seeker sought protection in a country but was denied, then a migrant could still apply for U.S. asylum. [...]
U.S. law allows refugees to request asylum when they arrive at the U.S. regardless of how they did so, but there is an exception for those who have come through a country considered to be “safe.”
Members of the Trump regime have spent months upon months trying to discourage immigrants from traveling to the United States by hyping how dangerous the journey through Mexico is. So, for them to now claim that Mexico is "safe" is not going to pass the laugh test in front of a federal judge.
Even if the Trump White House were not a beehive of contradictions, there's plenty of reason to think that the first federal judge who looks at this will block it -- as almost all of Trump's attempts to limit asylum have been blocked in court -- but the Trump regime is making their racist intent very clear.
Maybe that's the idea. Maybe they know it's unlikely that this will survive in court, but it sure will fire up the bigots.