The administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump plans to again end the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people who applied for asylum in the United States via the CBP One app. The plan was detailed in a court filing in Boston, Massachusetts, and comes after a judge ruled that Trump’s earlier effort to terminate the legal status of those individuals was unlawful.
Under President Joe Biden, individuals who registered for an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were preliminarily vetted and granted temporary legal status in the U.S. as their asylum cases were adjudicated. About 900,000 people were granted so-called humanitarian parole under the program.
But in April of last year, just months after Trump took office for a second term, many of those individuals received emails saying their status had been terminated. The message told its recipients it was “time for you to leave the United States”. Federal Judge Allison Burroughs subsequently ruled that the Department of Homeland Security did not follow the proper procedures in terminating the legal immigration status of CBP One users.
The U.S. Department of Justice, in the new filings, told Burroughs that the Trump administration was complying with her order. However, the department said the administration would begin issuing new parole termination notices, pursuant to a Tuesday memo from CBP’s head, Rodney Scott. The memo is not public, but according to the Justice Department, Scott provided an explanation for why, in his opinion, “parole is no longer appropriate for those aliens”.
Lawyers for Democracy Forward and Massachusetts Law Reform Institute, which represent the individuals whose status faces termination, urged Burroughs in a subsequent filing to prevent what they called a “deliberate attempt to evade compliance with the court’s order”. The next hearing was set for May 6.
During his second term, Trump has pursued a hardline immigration policy that has included staunching nearly all asylum claims at the southern border. Shortly after taking office, Trump’s officials also dissolved the CBP One app and relaunched it as CBP Home, a tool for self-deportation. His administration has claimed there was an “invasion” at the border that constituted a “national emergency”, thereby allowing Trump to bypass legal requirements to allow individuals seeking asylum into the country. Asylum, however, is a right enshrined both in domestic and international law, to protect people fleeing persecution.
Separately, on Friday, a federal appeals court ruled against the Trump administration’s ban on asylum at the southern U.S. border, potentially clearing the way for applications to once again be processed. The administration is expected to appeal the decision.
Source: www.aljazeera.com