Looking back at lessons learned from the last thirty years of border management, Refugees International sets out policies that the Biden administration can implement to more fairly and humanely manage asylum.

On June 15, 2020, the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice issued a major proposed asylum regulation. The proposed rule would dramatically curtail eligibility for asylum in the United States and would violate both the spirit and the letter of U.S. and international refugee law.

En los últimos años, Estados Unidos y México han adoptado una serie de medidas que facilitan la devolución de guatemaltecos a su país de origen. Tales medidas obligan a devolver a su país de origen a muchos guatemaltecos con solicitudes de refugiado válidas, que están en riesgo de sufrir persecución al regresar. Las deportaciones y los retornos realizados en mitad de la pandemia de COVID-19 agravan estos desafíos y contribuyen a la propagación del virus.

In recent years, the United States and Mexico have taken a series of steps that make it easier to return Guatemalans back to their home country. These measures force home many Guatemalans with valid refugee claims who are at risk of persecution upon return. Deportations and returns carried out in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic compound these challenges and contribute to the spread of the virus.

Bajo el Acuerdo Cooperativo de Asilo (ACA) con Guatemala, los Estados Unidos ha transferido rápidamente a solicitantes de asilo no guatemaltecos a Guatemala sin permitirles solicitar asilo en los Estados Unidos. Dada la incapacidad de Guatemala para proporcionar una protección efectiva y también el riesgo que enfrentan algunos transferidos en Guatemala o después de regresar a sus países de origen, los Estados Unidos viola su obligación de examinar los solicitudes de asilo al implementar el acuerdo.

Under the ACA with Guatemala, the United States has rapidly transferred non-Guatemalan asylum seekers to Guatemala without allowing them to lodge asylum claims in the United States. Given Guatemala’s inability to provide effective protection and the risk that some transferees face in Guatemala or after returning to their home countries, the United States violates its obligation to examine their asylum claims by implementing the agreement.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued an interim final rule directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to, in the interest of public health, “suspend the introduction of persons from designated countries or places.” The same day, the CDC issued an order that applied this authority to asylum seekers at the southern border. However, there is no public health rationale for singling them out for exclusion, and their expulsion from the Unites States is a stark violation of U.S. domestic and international obligations to those seeking refuge.

The world’s more than 70 million forcibly displaced people—including refugees, asylum seekers, IDPs, and other forced migrants—are among the most vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.

The Trump administration’s travel ban, upheld by the Supreme Court in June 2018, is unnecessarily putting lives at risk. Yael Schacher collected stories from individuals and the family members of individuals stranded by the ban in countries suffering from war and humanitarian crises.

The Trump administration asserts that its policies at the U.S. southern border are designed to protect women and children from traffickers. However, its actions tell a very different story. Yael Schacher paints a scathing picture of how the administration is rolling back protections for victims of trafficking that have been established over the last decade.

The Biden administration’s recent executive orders are welcome initial steps toward ending the illegal and inhumane asylum and border policies implemented by the Trump administration. The undersigned organizations urge the Biden administration to swiftly rescind the harmful policies still in place, provide refuge to children, families, and adults fleeing persecution and torture in compliance with U.S. law and treaty obligations, communicate and coordinate with civil society groups assisting asylum seekers, and ensure sufficient resources are dedicated to guarantee a humane and dignified reception of people seeking protection.

Refugees International strongly opposes a Trump administration “Security Bars and Processing” proposed rule. In our comment for the Federal Register, Yael Schacher writes that the proposed rule would “expand the definition of national security to incorporate public health bars in an unprecedented, unnecessary, and arbitrary way.”

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher on the impact of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) budget crisis on the agency’s processing of humanitarian visas, asylum seekers, and refugees.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher highlights three concerns regarding U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policies on detention, deportation, and expulsion of asylum seekers during the pandemic.

Together with five other organizations, Refugees International calls on the Trump Administration to cease its reported plan to shut the border to people seeking asylum in the United States in response to COVID-19. Rather, there are concrete steps to take driven by science and public-health expertise to protect asylum seekers while stemming the pandemic.

In a statement for the record to the House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration and Citizenship, Refugees International expressed concern that policies put in place by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) influence immigration courts to the detriment of those seeking protection.

Refugees International opposes asylum cooperative agreements that allow the United States to send asylum seekers from its southern border to third countries without adequate assessment of whether the asylum seekers would be safe there. 

In a statement for the record to the House Committee on Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations, Yael Schacher outlines three ways that the Remain in Mexico policy raises legal and human rights concerns.  

On November 8, 2019, Refugees International submitted a comment for the record opposing the Trump administration’s proposed rule to eliminate the 30-day deadline to process initial asylum seekers’ work permits. The rule effectively allows the government to take an unlimited amount of time to process asylum seekers’ requests for work authorization.

Refugees International is very concerned about the administration’s negotiated arrangements to return asylum seekers to danger in Mexico and Central America. These policies and agreements effectively bypass the laws Congress adopted to protect refugees. Contrary to what the administration claims, these policies will also increase smuggling and trafficking.

Whether it is Rohingya Muslims fleeing Myanmar for Bangladesh, Venezuelans fleeing into Colombia, or Central Americans fleeing the Northern Triangle and living in fear in northern Mexico, asylum-seeking is a far less than orderly process. But smart and humane policies can help.

In support of a challenge to the Remain in Mexico program in California federal court, Refugees International and Yael Schacher, with attorneys from Sidley Austin LLP, submitted a brief describing why the Refugee Act forbids the program.

LGBT asylum seekers have compelling reasons for fleeing their home countries. The United States should provide them a fair asylum process.

Historian and Refugees International U.S. Senior Advocate Yael Schacher explains why it is crucial for the National Archives to retain records regarding CBP misconduct that the agency wants to destroy.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher examines policies and practices related to family separation among immigrants in the 1920s and now.

In an amici curiae brief in the appeal litigation, four former officials who ran the State Department bureau responsible for refugee resettlement express support for the position of the resettlement agencies.

Donald Trump's administration proposed a cold-blooded new asylum regulation last week that would limit those eligible to qualify for asylum in the United States.

Since the summer of 2019, the make-shift encampment in Matamoros of asylum seekers in the Remain in Mexico program has faced numerous challenges, most obviously a lack of adequate shelter, basic necessities, essential services, and security. Now, amid the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the struggles of everyday life for asylum seekers waiting in Matamoros have been compounded by a new fear—the potential spread of the deadly virus.

The coronavirus has crowded out many policy debates. But in one area, immigration, it is fusing with the Trump administration’s broader agenda. Using covid-19 as a cover, the administration is making its most overt move yet to eliminate the right to seek asylum in the United States.

When Javier Zamora was nine years old, he traveled unaccompanied from El Salvador to the United States to reunite with his parents. Now a poet, Javier sat down with our Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher and U.S. Domestic Policy intern Jenny Rodriguez to share his story and poetry.

This International Women’s Day, Refugees International is celebrating the strength and leadership of women on the frontlines of displaced communities. Despite the heightened challenges they face on the move, displaced women around the globe are rising up to work toward a better future.

The Trump administration implemented its Remain in Mexico policy one year ago. Yael Schacher has conducted ten fact-finding missions to the U.S. southern border over the last year to monitor the administration’s practices. She has witnessed and reported on a full assault on asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Sprawling camps with donated tents, limited food, minimal medical care, and rampant crime — not the picture of a place that anyone would want to be. Yet these are the conditions that greet asylum seekers and refugees arriving at the southern borders of the United States and the European Union. Devon Cone and Yael Schacher write in The Hill that if there is a crisis, it is not in asylum seekers arriving. It is in how we are treating these men, women, and children.

A new Trump administration proposal would undermine the rights of all workers and harm asylum seekers. Yael Schacher provides a historic perspective on this necessary right.

The right to seek asylum has long been enshrined in domestic and international law. And yet a new rule proposed by the Trump administration would make it all but impossible for most people to apply for asylum at the southern border. Despite these attacks on the U.S. asylum system, Carly Goodman, S. Deborah Kang, and Yael Schacher describe how history has shown that advocacy can prevail and protect the rights of asylum seekers.

The U.S. government should follow its own laws and treat people seeking refuge humanely. Instead of paying for more ICE beds and for additional unlicensed influx shelters to detain children, the government should ensure the release of unaccompanied children to sponsors and contract with community-based non-profits to run case management support programs. And instead of using detention as a punishment and a deterrent, the government should use both diplomacy and aid to address root causes of migration from Central America.

Ever since Congress denied funding for his border wall, President Trump has blamed Democrats for allowing smugglers to “tape up” women and traffic them over the border. There’s little evidence to support that claim. Yet, a House Homeland Security Advisory Council report suggested that the way to stop exploitation of Central American kids is to adopt a policy of swift repatriation and prolonged detention of children seeking asylum. This is an unserious and inhumane approach to the horrors of exploitation and persecution.

In a piece for the Fair Observer, Yael Schacher reveals how the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy is failing—and why it is the wrong approach. Her reporting is based on first-hand observation of immigration court hearings involving some of the initial victims of this new policy.

At the 2020 Physicians for Human Rights National Student Conference, Refugees International Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher presented on “COVID-19 & Asylum Seekers, Detention Centers, & Immigrant Essential Workers at the U.S.-Mexico Border.”

Refugees International hosts the fifth in our series of “Voices from the Border” events exploring U.S. immigration detention and the need for humane alternatives. The panel addresses how to implement better policies and assess what we might learn from Canada’s approach to detention and social services for asylum seekers.

Johns Hopkins Science Policy Group hosted Yael Schacher, Fatima Sanz, and W. Courtland Robinsos in their fifth STEMulate The Vote Seminar Series.

On Wednesday, October 14 from 3:00pm to 4:30pm EDT, the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention held their first webinar to discuss the US Southern Border as an Atrocity Prevention Site.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher participated in a briefing hosted by Amnesty International on U.S. asylum policy.

Refugees International and Amnesty International hosted a conversation about humanitarian aid and missing migrants at the border. The event included a screening of USA V SCOTT, a documentary about the prosecution of Scott Warren of No More Deaths for providing aid to migrants. The event was inspired by the story of an asylum seeker who went missing this spring after crossing into Texas and the effort of his wife, in Guatemala, to find a trace of him.

Ahead of World Refugee Day JRS held a webinar for experts to discuss the current situation on the US-Mexico Border, the impact of these policies on asylum seekers in Mexico, and what we can do to ensure our system of asylum stays intact even during a global pandemic.

Refugees International and Human Rights watch hosted a conversation on the findings of their recent joint report, “Deportation with a Layover: Failure of Protection under the U.S.-Guatemala Asylum Cooperative Agreement.” The conversation featured commentary from the report authors Yael Schacher, Rachel Schmidtke, and Ariana Sawyer, a video from a woman from El Salvador who was transferred to Guatemala through the ACA, and commentary from Linda Corchado, a leading immigration attorney in El Paso, where implementation of the ACA began.

Yael Schacher, Refugees International’s senior U.S. advocate, and Alex Aleinikoff, professor at The New School and director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility discuss asylum at the U.S-Mexico border in the time of COVID-19.

Refugees International and Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) co-host a conversation about the importance of protections for unaccompanied minors and the impact of recent changes in policy toward them. Panelists include immigration advocates and a young woman who fled from Guatemala for the United States when she was 15 years old.

Through his administration’s cruel ‘Remain in Mexico’ program and other draconian border policies, President Trump has fueled a humanitarian crisis at the U.S. southern border over the last four years that has pulled families apart and endangered the lives of thousands. His trip to Alamo, Texas will shine a spotlight on these failures.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher responds to the news that the Trump administration has finalized its most restrictive asylum policy.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher reacts to the news that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on the “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher comments on the recent news of medical mistreatment of immigrants and asylum seekers in detention facilities.

Today’s ruling from the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in Ramos v. Wolf has jeopardized the lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals with temporary protected status (TPS) from El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Sudan.

Statement from Refugees International’s Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher on the passage of the No Ban Act in the House of Representatives.

The Supreme Court stopped the Trump administration’s arbitrary ending of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher on an agreement between the U.S. government and Honduras to send non-Honduran asylum seekers to Honduras to seek refuge.

Senior U.S. Advocate Yael Schacher comments on how President Trump’s latest executive order is illegal and needlessly suspends the admission of young children of legal permanent residents and elderly parents of naturalized American citizens.

Despite the current national emergency involving COVID-19, immigration court hearings for asylum seekers in the Remain in Mexico program continue. These hearings must stop for the duration of the crisis.