Publications

The proposed rule, "Circumvention of Legal Pathways," seeks to exclude people from asylum unless they follow narrowly prescribed paths preferred by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice. The agencies’ narrow exceptions – a mobile app rife with documented problems; a denied asylum application in countries of transit; narrow, slow, and difficult to access 4 CORE/2058160.0145/180723047.2 advanced permission to enter the U.S. before fleeing persecution; or limited exceptionally compelling circumstances – violate the plain language of 8 U.S.C. section 1158(a)(1) and contravene the very intent of the international refugee protection framework. The proposed rule’s insistence that applicants alternatively first seek asylum protection in a country through which they travel – even after expressly declining to find such an alternative to be safe – is no alternative pathway at all.