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President Trump is planning a major speech on Tuesday to announce a massive wave of repression on the southern border, officials said Friday, staging an important piece to boost his anti-immigrant base a week before the elections. mid-term legislative elections, which involve Republican control of Congress. .
Mr. Trump should use these remarks to describe his border fortification projects, including the actions of the executive that he plans to prohibit entry to migrants and asylum seekers. 39, Central America, as well as the deployment of hundreds of US Army soldiers to help the effort.
An attempt to reduce financial aid to Central American countries whose citizens are heading north, towards the border, is also under discussion, according to people informed of the discussions.
Even as the president's advisors met on Friday to clarify the details of the multi-faceted border operation, human rights groups voiced concerns over Trump's plans, calling them motivated by political reasons and potentially contrary to international and US law.
The biggest source of concern is the executive action that weighs Mr. Trump to ensure that it is impossible for a large group of Central American migrants traveling to northern Mexico. to seek refuge in the United States.
The plan, according to people familiar with him who spoke on condition of anonymity, would include a modification of the rules governing eligibility for asylum as well as a presidential proclamation qualifying the caravan as " situation of national emergency "and prohibiting its participants from entering the country.
It is unclear whether such a presidential directive would be legal, whether in immigration law or in US international law, both of which require the assessment of the individual claims of persons who are present to the authorities and ask for asylum.
In addition, Mr. Trump would have difficulty demonstrating that the caravan – a group currently estimated at 6,000 or less and mostly women and children and located approximately 1,000 miles south of the border – is a national emergency. Given the complexity of the legal problems, the plan could take months or even years to send future immigrants from the United States.
Nevertheless, during the review of the strategy, Trump seemed to bet that the political impact would be more immediate. He called the caravan a "blessing in disguise" for Republicans in the run-up to the Nov. 6 elections, as it seeks to demonize its participants and link them to progressive democrats and groups.
"It's much more the pre-election lens than the legality of the president's action," said Jennifer Quigley, refugee specialist at Human Rights First. "The caravan is such a small number of people approaching our border that it undermines the credulity of saying it is a national emergency that requires immediate action."
The distinction could be important because the strategy put forward by the president involves circumventing the usual federal normative process to impose an immediate change in the rules governing asylum applications, which can only be done when the government has a "good cause" to do so. .
Under this plan, which is still under discussion and could change, the ministries of Homeland Security and Justice would jointly enact new rules that would prohibit migrants crossing the border between ports of entry from seeking asylum. according to people familiar with the discussions but were not allowed to discuss the schedule. Exceptions would be made for those at risk of torture at home.
Mr. Trump would then invoke broad presidential powers to prohibit foreigners from entering the country for reasons of national security – under the same section of the immigration law that underpinned the law on immigration. # 39; immigration. travel ban – issue a proclamation preventing migrants from crossing the southern border, according to the plans under discussion. The scope of the directive was unclear, including whether it would apply only to persons from certain countries or to those arriving within a certain period of time.
Several refugee rights groups have condemned the proposal and said that they would consider taking legal action to block it if Trump followed up on his proposal.
Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU's Immigrant Rights Project, said it was "outrageous" for Trump to even consider such moves.
"It would mean refusing to protect people who can prove that they are fleeing the persecution," said Jadwat. "It would be a huge moral failure, and any project of this type will be subject to a thorough legal review."
Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said her group was also ready to challenge Trump's actions.
"We will use all the tools to prevent Trump from undermining the Constitution and international laws and instituting the program of his administration to impose a ban on Latinx in any form," said Ms. Hincapié. "We call on all communities to reject these hate policies. We can and must be better than that. "
But Trump's advisers and those who share his restrictive views on immigration say that the president has quite the executive power to close the border to a certain group.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, said the US government had already put in place emergency plans to prevent certain groups of foreigners from entering the country, as it did in 1981 after the 1980 Mariel recovery, when thousands of Cubans arrived on US shores.
"The statutory authority is explicit about the fact that Congress has authorized the president to block the entry of any person or any class of people," Krikorian said.
Although the exercise of this power by Mr. Trump is legally challenged, it may be helpful to advance the political situation and have these laws changed so that a judge prevents the president from enforcing the border.
"It's a way of focusing attention on the real problem," he said.
A senior Defense Department official said the Pentagon had already begun to identify active-duty troops to meet the Department of Homeland Security's border security request, though the scale Deployment still depends to a large extent on the magnitude of the action that Mr. Trump decides to take. To seal the border, it would take more than 800 to 1,000 soldiers currently considered, officials said. Border State officials told the Department of Defense that this would have a huge economic impact on their local economies.
The Defense Department is seeking an initial deployment of troops to the border next week, added the official who requested anonymity because he was not allowed to detail the plans. .
The military aspect of this plan has also attracted criticism from human rights groups.
Adam Isacson, director of defense supervision at the Washington office for Latin America, said with As the number of migrants is at its lowest, the government should devote its resources to treating what would likely be "a small number of children and families who have fled one of the most violent areas in the world in search of protection."
"There is no precedent in the history of the United States for the use of US military personnel on US soil to prevent unarmed people from seeking asylum in our country. country, "said Isacson.
