Asylum officers union says Trump migration policy 'abandons' American tradition

A union representing federal asylum officers said in a court filing Wednesday that the Trump administration’s policy forcing migrants to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases are decided risks violating international treaty obligations and “abandons our tradition of providing a safe haven to the persecuted.”

The union, which represents 2,500 Department of Homeland Security employees, including the asylum officers, said in its filing that the policy, the Migration Protection Protocols, puts migrants in danger because they could face persecution while being forced to wait in Mexico, undermining the purpose of asylum.

Citing a State Department report, the union said that “impunity for human rights abuses remained a problem” in Mexico. Migrants are at particular risk of being sexually assaulted, it said, and ethnic minorities could face “persecution similar to the persecution they face in their home countries.”

“Asylum officers are duty bound to protect vulnerable asylum-seekers from persecution,” the union said. “They should not be forced to honor departmental directives that are fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our nation and our international and domestic legal obligations.”

Muhammad Faridi, a lawyer representing the union, Local 1924 of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in an interview that the court filing was significant given the officers’ role in returning migrants to Mexico.

“These are people working in the background. These are not people opining or expressing their opinions on public policy or litigation matters,” Faridi said. “It takes something as egregious as the MPP, something that is so fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our country and international treaty obligations, it’s something like that that brings people to the litigation arena.”

The filing was a striking rebuke of a central part of President Donald Trump’s immigration strategy, coming from federal employees intimately involved in deciding whether those seeking refuge in the United States should be allowed to stay. As part of a deal with Mexico that Trump said stopped him from raising tariffs, Mexico committed to work to expand the program, according to the administration.

The White House did not immediately answer requests seeking comment on the brief Wednesday night. The Justice Department declined to comment.

The administration announced the policy in December, arguing that it would help stop people from using the asylum process to enter the country and remain illegally.

Trump had long been angered by policies that temporarily allowed asylum-seekers in the United States while they waited for their court hearings. Asylum-seekers have also shown up in increasing numbers in the past few months as more Central American migrants traveling through Mexico have arrived at the United States’ border.

More than 11,000 migrants have been returned to wait in Mexico under the policy, according to senior homeland security officials.

The Trump administration policy was criticized for putting the migrants at risk, and legal advocates for migrants pointed to a spike in violence and overburdened shelters in Mexican border towns. Several Democratic presidential candidates at Wednesday’s debate said the policy was one of the worst abuses of the Trump administration.

The administration has said the policy also aims to ease overcrowded border facilities strained by the increase in migrants.

In a lawsuit filed in February in federal court in San Francisco, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups said the policy violated immigration law.

A federal district judge, Richard Seeborg, blocked the policy in April, saying that the president did not have the power to enforce it and that it violated immigration laws. Seeborg said the program lacked safeguards to ensure that migrants were not returned to a place where they faced risks.

The Trump administration appealed the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in San Francisco, and on April 12 the court allowed the policy to be enforced while the case is pending.

The union’s filing Wednesday was a “friend of the court” brief in the case. In the filing, the union traced the United States’ long history of embracing migrants, including Irish immigrants fleeing famine and disease in the mid-1800s and refugees of communist-dominated countries a century later. The union said the Trump administration’s policy should be blocked.

“Now, perhaps more than ever, America needs to continue its long-standing tradition of offering protection, freedom, and opportunity to the vulnerable and persecuted,” the union said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.