The proposed rule builds on years of regulations, proclamations, and executive orders issued by the Trump administration in an effort to deliberately dismantle the asylum system and make it extremely difficult for people fleeing violence and persecution—especially those fleeing from Central America—to seek safety in the US.
The proposed regulation would characterize asylum seekers as threats to public health, routinely block them from asylum and other humanitarian protections in the US, and deport people waiting for their asylum hearings. The US would be sending vulnerable people seeking safety back to face the threat of extreme violence, persecution, and other serious harm.
As a humanitarian organization providing medical care in crisis zones around the world, MSF has for years documented testimonies and medical data showing that many people on the migration route through Mexico are fleeing extreme violence and direct threats to their lives and the lives of their family members. We see large numbers of patients from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, in particular. The high levels of violence in these countries are comparable to what we have witnessed in war zones where MSF has been working for decades—and this insecurity is a major factor fueling migration north to Mexico and the US.
For the past four months, the Trump administration has used COVID-19 as a pretext to evade domestic and international legal obligations and slash protections for asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors at the border. In its latest proposed rule, the administration goes a step further to eliminate humanitarian protections for most people seeking safety in the US, relying on specious public health contentions with no basis in medical fact. Sections 208.13/1208.13 and 208.16/1208.16 create extraordinary public health bars to asylum and withholding of removal protections that will return asylum seekers to persecution. These sections would grant Department of Justice (DoJ) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials sweeping authorities to deny humanitarian protection to and deport those who:
- exhibit “symptoms consistent with being afflicted with any contagious or infectious disease”;
- have “come into contact with such a disease”;
- or come from a country or area where such disease is “prevalent or epidemic”.
The expansive rule singles out asylum seekers as vectors of a host of diseases—including COVID-19—and empowers immigration authorities to ban from protection those who appear to be infected and those transit through countries where the disease is prevalent, without regard to actual exposure. The rule could also apply to individuals in the US who have “come into contact” with a covered disease, potentially exposing asylum seekers broadly and asylum-seeking health workers specifically to denial of protection and deportation.
