The Trump administration and our leaders in Congress now have a clear choice to make: Whether to adopt commonsense public health measures that protect everyone—regardless of where they come from—or to embrace policies that endanger asylum seekers and jeopardize our collective health.
Author: Karen Musalo
Karen Musalo is a law professor and director of the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She has litigated major landmark cases on behalf of women asylum seekers fleeing gender-based violence and published extensively on refugee issues and conditions in Central America which force women to flee and seek protection.
Inside the So-Called “Safe Third”—and Trump’s Latest Attack on Asylum-Seekers
“Orwellian” is the only word to describe one of the administration’s latest assaults on asylum, which would deem the northern triangle countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras—which all experience crisis levels of violence—to be “safe third countries” to which the U.S. could “outsource” its obligations to refugees.
48,000 Asylum Seekers Have Been Put in Harm’s Way by the Trump Administration
The perversely-named Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)—more appropriately dubbed by advocates the Migrant Persecution Protocols—requires asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings. Every day that this policy is allowed to stand, the administration is endangering thousands of lives.
The Trump Administration is Fighting to Indefinitely Detain Migrant Children and Families
It is indisputable that barring exceptional circumstances, jailing children is wrong. Child welfare experts agree that detention, even for short periods of time, has profoundly adverse impacts on children’s long-term health and development. But the Trump administration is still fighting to hold migrant children in detention—indefinitely.