The Daily - The U.S. as a Place of Refuge

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

As large groups of Central American migrants approach the U.S. border, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for them to apply for asylum. Is the president undermining the original concept of asylum, or is he restoring it? Guest: Caitlin Dickerson, who covers immigration for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. As large groups of Central American migrants approach the U.S. border, the Trump administration is making it harder and harder for them to apply for asylum. Is the president undermining the original concept of asylum? Or is he restoring it? It's Tuesday, November 27th.

In 1939, a steamliner called the SS St. Louis flees Nazi Germany with about 900 Jewish passengers on board, and they're seeking protection. But they're turned away from the United States. they're seeking protection. But they're turned away from the United States. And the American State Department's reasoning for turning the boat away is that essentially the passengers needed to wait their turn, that they hadn't applied through the proper process for entry into the United States, and so they weren't eligible. And they're also turned away from Cuba, from Panama, Uruguay, from Cuba, from Panama, Uruguay, Paraguay, Canada, and Argentina. So ultimately, the boat is turned around, and it ends up back in Europe, and the passengers are sprinkled across the region.

But as Germany grows larger, several hundred of the passengers end up in Nazi death camps, and ultimately they're killed. So it's stories like this that give birth to the modern concept of asylum. Caitlin Dickerson covers immigration for The Times. Out of World War II, the United States and its allies decide that they can never again turn away people seeking refuge like they had during the Holocaust. For today, we realize that our half of the world, the American half, cannot remain well if the other half is sick. And it's at a U.N. convention on refugees in 1951, which takes place in Geneva, that they agree to this concept called non-refoulement. It's a French idea which means essentially not returning people to situations that are dangerous.

We realize that we must rehabilitate these displaced persons for our own interest and self-preservation as well as theirs. The idea for the countries that sign on is to put the onus on themselves. So it's not just saying we can't oppress people based on various forms of racism or discrimination, but that if foreign governments are oppressing people, it's our responsibility to offer them a safe haven. That's why this Belgian baby or Russian baby or French baby or Polish baby is today under an army woolen blanket marked U.S. And what happens as a result of this new understanding of how to treat outsiders in harm's way?

So this understanding is codified into American immigration law and we begin to usher in groups of people who are in need of protection. And on paper, how are we deciding in the U.S. who would be granted asylum in this era? So in order to get asylum in this era, a person has to prove that they're facing persecution in their home country. It can be persecution directly by their own government or persecution that their government isn't protecting them from. But there's more.

That would be too simple and too low a bar that too many people, quite frankly, would qualify for. And so the law goes even further. It lays out five categories of persecution that an asylum seeker has to prove. So either persecution based on their race, their nationality, their religion, their political views, or their participation in what's called a particular social group. But it's not as if we suddenly have an entirely altruistic,

open-door policy where anybody can come from anywhere. It's nowhere near, in fact. And you see that there's actually a lot of strategy and politics involved from the very beginning. So, for example, the types of people that the United States begins to allow in are people like Albert Einstein from Germany. Russian ballet dancers from the Bolshoi during of gratitude as a man, as a good European, and as a Jew. Russian ballet dancers from the Bolshoi during the Cold War. Mikhail Baryshnikov, Soviet Union. People coming from places that the United States was in active conflict with and places where the United States wanted to send a message

that democracy was going to be this beacon of freedom and of safety for people who are being oppressed. To the man deprived of civil rights in his native land, America offers the hope of freedom. So on the one hand, there's this benevolent justification for the asylum system. But on the other hand, there's a very clear political and strategic reason that the United States offers this protection to certain migrants. And you see that in these waves of people who come over seeking asylum in the following decades. Some of them are accepted and others aren't. And it's really based on whether they're fleeing something that the United States is involved in and has

something to gain from. Between midnight and noon today, 23 boats filled with over 800 Cubans reached Key West, Florida. U.S. Marines are now on duty at Key West to keep order among the restless refugees waiting resettlement in the United States. Cubans coming over during the Mariel boat crisis. The governor of Texas, Bill Clements, says the president has literally opened the floodgates, placing no limitations on the number of Cubans entering the United States. And it's a show of protection to Fidel Castro that, you know, the United States is going to offer refuge to these people who clearly are being oppressed by communism. Many of those who have arrived in the States tell horror stories of being beaten by pro-Castro Cubans and secret police.

You know, we see the same thing with over 100,000 Vietnamese people who come over by boat during the Vietnam War. The exodus grew to flood proportions early this year. And in six months, Southeast Asian nations have been inundated. Malaysia, 77,000. Hong Kong, 66,000. Another conflict involving communism where the United States has something to gain. There's an ever-increasing sea rescue operation in the South China Sea, which of course includes American ships. But at the same time, you see equally large numbers of migrants from Haiti being turned away from the United States at a time when this country really doesn't have a whole lot to gain politically from accepting them. In Washington today, there's been a stunning

reversal in President Clinton's policy for Haitian refugees. Those who flee their country on boats will no longer find a safe haven in the United States. So you see President Bush and President Clinton specifically categorize Haitian migrants as economic migrants as a way to bar them from the asylum system and to keep them from entering the country at all, even though many of them probably could have made a case for asylum under the law. Political repression by Haiti's military is as pervasive as ever. Mutilated bodies are dumped daily on city streets. From the very beginning, you see that part of these decisions are informed by essentially a public relations campaign

and also just by diplomacy and by relationships with governments who we wanted to send a message to. So one of the biggest changes you see happens under President Obama. That's when the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the highest immigration court in the country, takes up the case of a woman named Amina Cifuentes. The case involves a Guatemalan woman who fled her abusive husband and her country in 2005. Raped, beaten, kicked, burned with acid, and punched so hard in the stomach when she was eight months pregnant that her child was born prematurely with bruises. Her lawyers argue that she's the victim of this broader crisis happening in Central America, that there's essentially an epidemic of violence against women in Central America, and that governments there are refusing to protect women. And her lawyers are successful. They convince a panel of judges that there is, in fact, a culture of,

they say, machismo and family violence in Guatemala. For the first time, an immigration board has ruled that a victim of domestic violence may be granted asylum in the United States. Which means that all of a sudden, it opens this floodgate of other women like her. So in this post-Cold War era, this case seems to be a broadening of what asylum looks like. Exactly. And this is a really significant case because it lays down precedent that applies to every single immigration court in the country. That's why it makes such a big impact. But you also see much smaller scale broadenings happening everywhere all the while. I mean, asylum law is a living thing and it's always changing and individual judges have a lot of discretion.

So on a daily basis, they might be hearing a new type of case, a new type of conflict, a new type of persecution, and then they have to decide whether they think, you know, that person should be brought into the fold or not. So over time, you start to see courts accepting cases from people who are fleeing countries based on a particular terrorist group that's persecuting them or who are fleeing because of their sexuality or their gender orientation. that's persecuting them or who are fleeing because of their sexuality or their gender orientation. Many of the parents and children seeking refuge in the U.S. are fleeing extreme gang violence in Central America. The surge of Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS and other terrorist groups. The State Department has announced it's now giving preference to refugees who are gay because they may be facing persecution in other countries. How does this expansion of asylum affect the number of people who actually apply for asylum

in the U.S.? There's been a surge of illegal immigrants, many of them children, in recent months. And as Anna Werner reports... Between 2008 and 2016, you see the number of asylum claims that are made expand massively. The federal government overwhelmed this year by more than 50,000 undocumented minors crossing the border near the Rio Grande. There was an increase of over 1,700 percent during that time.

A massive, massive increase. The numbers are unprecedented. It's a crisis like nothing I've ever seen before. It's a very serious concern. I don't think the flow will stop. And that has to be related to the fact that the United States is accepting this broader definition of asylum. Yeah. I mean, from everything that we hear, word of mouth is incredibly powerful. And so if

somebody from your town leaves and they make an argument and they do it successfully and they get asylum in the U.S., then, you know, 10 more people might follow. So it sounds like a lot of this happened under President Obama. Is there a sense that during the Obama administration, the president and those around him understood that this was happening and perhaps might have been worried about the numbers? Absolutely. I mean, you remember under President Obama that there were multiple, you know, surges, they would call them, of migrants crossing the border. A lot of those people were asylum seekers. And there's a huge concern under the Obama administration

of what to do with them. I think the difference is that that administration was really committed to maintaining and maybe even growing and fortifying the asylum system. Whereas now we see President Trump questioning the very premise and making big changes to knock out of qualification large categories of people.

We'll be right back. So, Caitlin, how has President Trump changed the asylum system? Well, as soon as he gets into office, he starts to chip away at it. office, he starts to chip away at it. The biggest loophole drawing illegal aliens to our borders is the use of fraudulent or meritless asylum claims to gain entry into our great country. And create this new narrative about the United States where it's no longer this place of refuge. And you hear him talk about it really all the time. This endemic abuse of the asylum system makes a mockery of our immigration system. And the first thing he does is he turns back the clock. Breaking overnight, thousands of asylum seekers may be turned away at the southern border because of a new Trump administration policy.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions says most victims of gang violence and domestic abuse will not qualify for asylum. So his attorney general at the time, Jeff Sessions, introduces court precedent that overrules that case of Aminta Cifuentes so that victims of domestic violence no longer qualify for asylum. I cannot overstate how big of a change that is for American immigration policy. And he also adds to that victims of gang violence. They can't get asylum anywhere. So he's narrowing the criteria. It is difficult to convey how big these implications are going to be. There are about 700,000 cases that are pending right now in the immigration system for asylum. And this

is going to affect so many of those cases. Narrowing the criteria that allow somebody to win this status. This is the personification of the just-don't-come-here Donald Trump immigration policy. But they don't just turn back the clock. They keep going even further. So they introduce this concept called metering, which limits the number of people who can apply for asylum every day. There are rows of migrants that are here. They are sleeping on the floor because they want to be the first to get in line to seek asylum from the U.S. when the doors open later on this morning.

And so as a result, now you have these vast encampments of people who are sleeping along the border for days and even weeks as they're waiting to apply. But right now, we're only taking 30 people a day. There are already more than 1,000 people in line. What does it mean? It means they're going to wait here for five weeks or several months. He then introduces a new rule. The rules published by the Justice Department and Homeland Security yesterday will make

it harder for immigrants to claim asylum if they are caught crossing the border between designated ports of entry. You have to go to a specific set of government offices in order to apply for asylum, whereas before you used to be able to do it anywhere at any time within two years of arriving in the United States. A judge has blocked the administration's attempt to ban asylum seekers who do not enter through designated ports of entry. That policy was challenged right away in federal court, and it's been temporarily blocked. The president lashed out at today's ruling, calling it unfair. It's a disgrace, in my opinion. It's a disgrace what happens with the Ninth Circuit.

We will win that case in the Supreme Court of the United States. But that hasn't stopped the administration. CBS News has learned Mexico's incoming government has discussed plans with the Trump administration to have Mexico essentially serve as a waiting room for migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. Last week, we heard about yet another policy, and this is the boldest one yet, and it's not in place yet, but the president has suggested that it could be at any time. And it would require asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are being adjudicated. And keep in mind, these cases take years to resolve. So you would show up at the

border, you would put your name on a list, and you'd get a court date, and they'd say, okay, see you later, hang out in Mexico, come back in, you know, November of 2020, and we'll see you for your first court date and they'd say, OK, see you later. Hang out in Mexico. Come back in, you know, November of 2020 and we'll see you for your first court date. And how is that different from the policy that now exists? In the past, if you came to the United States and asked for asylum, you would either be detained that whole time or you might be released with a bond. You might be released with an ankle bracelet. And during that time, you can get a work permit. You can get a job. But you'd be in the United States. In the United States. And you can sort of sustain yourself. And President Trump's greatest concern,

as we've talked about on this show, is the idea that people won't come back to court, that they'll be let in, they'll disappear, and we'll never see them again. We know that actually only about 11 percent of asylum seekers do that. But that's the point of this new policy, About 11 percent of asylum seekers do that. But that's the point of this new policy, essentially. You can see how it's a really compelling reason to not come and apply for asylum at all if you're going to have to wait several years and you're going to have to do it in northern Mexico. And Caitlin, what does this look like on the ground where people are applying for asylum now that the Trump administration has introduced all of these new rollbacks? the Trump administration has introduced all of these new rollbacks. It looks like the scene you saw in Tijuana on Sunday at the border where there was a peaceful protest going on involving probably thousands of people. And then

a few hundred of them, they ran out of patience. They got frustrated. They broke off and tried to rush the border. Some of them said that they were just trying to protest these wait lists, but others said they thought they could get in. They thought they could convince American immigration officials to allow them in. And of course, they didn't. Instead, they were tear gassed, and the border was shut down entirely for several hours. So those clashes are a response, it seems, to these changes put in place by President Trump when it comes to asylum. That's right. And you see tensions escalating on both sides. So we've got caravans that are unprecedented in size, mass protests, hundreds of people rushing the border.

That didn't used to happen. And you can see how it's sort of coming in direct response to these really dramatic changes that are happening over a really short period of time. And at the same time— You've got to have borders. If you don't have borders, you don't have a country. I mean, the Democrats want open borders, and they want these people coming in. Many of those people are criminals, okay?

You've heard the president now talk several times about potentially inflicting violence on asylum seekers. If they have to, they're gonna use lethal force. I've given the okay. If they have to, they're going to use lethal force. I've given the okay. If they have to, I hope they don't have to. He gave a speech where he threatened that, you know, if border crossers were to throw rocks, they might be shot.

They're throwing rocks viciously and violently. You saw that three days ago. Really hurting the military. We're not going to put up with that. They want to throw rocks at our military, our military fights back. We're going to consider it. I tell them, consider it a rifle.

When they throw rocks like they did at the Mexico military and police, I say, consider it a rifle. So the collective impact of policies that make the lines longer to seek asylum, that restrict the number of places where you can apply for asylum, and force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico versus the United States, is to essentially send a firm, unambiguous message that we really don't want you to be seeking asylum unless you absolutely need it. Right. And absolutely need it, right, is such a subjective idea. But I think the clear message from the White House is that it's not up to people coming from Central America to decide and define who is qualified for asylum, who's really in danger, who really deserves protection.

You know, we, the United States government, are going to decide. And we, the Trump administration, have a much narrower definition in mind than we've seen in a really long time. So, Caitlin, at this point, what is the state of U.S. asylum? And how closely does it resemble

the original idea that the U.S. and our allies came up with after World War II? Well, remember that the asylum system has always been strategic. It's always been political. And President Trump has very much followed in that tradition. The difference now is that what's most politically expedient for him to do is to limit asylum, to turn more people away. There's no real benefit from sending a message to the world that the really anything. So America first, right? I mean, that's exactly the way that President Trump describes it. So is this the future of asylum? Is this the system that the United States is likely to have for the foreseeable future? system that the United States is likely to have for the foreseeable future? It's really for the courts to decide. And a lot of these policies have already ended up

in court. And this idea about making people stay in Mexico, if it's introduced, will be no exception. And I think the question now that the courts are trying to answer is whether the asylum system has been changed or really gutted so much that it no longer serves this idea that the United States agreed to half a century ago, you know, President Trump would argue and members of his administration have argued that, in fact, their version of asylum is truer to that historical interpretation because they still have the exact same examples in mind in terms of who should apply for asylum and who shouldn't. 2018, we're not only accepting people who are fleeing communism or only accepting people who are fleeing Nazis, but also victims of gang violence and victims of domestic violence, people fleeing their home countries based on their sexual orientations. And that's what the courts will have to decide. Which asylum is the right asylum? Which asylum is the right asylum?

Caitlin, thank you very much. Thanks, everybody, for joining on short notice. Today, we announced new actions to accelerate the transformation of General Motors. On Monday, America's largest car manufacturer, General Motors, said it would shut down operations at five factories across North America and cut more than 14,000 jobs in a major reorganization that has angered lawmakers across the U.S. We are taking these actions now while the company and the economy are strong. GM's chief executive, Mary Barra, said the company was responding to lower demand for traditional passenger cars,

including small and midsize sedans, and shifting resources toward trucks, SUVs, and crossovers, and preparing for a future of electric and self-driving cars. Well, we don't like it. I believe they'll be opening up something else. The large-scale job reductions in states like Ohio and Michigan, where President Trump has promised

a revival of manufacturing, prompted a swift reaction from the president, who said he had spoken with Barrow. I was very tough. I spoke with her when I heard they were closing. And I said, you know, this country's done a lot for General Motors. You better get back in there soon. That's Ohio. And you better get back in there soon.

And 30 meters, 20 meters, 17 meters, standing by for touchdown. On Monday, after a six-month journey across 300 million miles, an unmanned spacecraft operated by NASA landed on Mars, where it will spend the next two years probing the planet's interior. In its first test, the nearly $1 billion spacecraft will release a specially designed probe that will burn its way through 16 feet of Martian soil to better understand what the planet is made of and how it was formed. This never gets old. No, it doesn't, Rob. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.