Trump plans to prevent migrants from seeking asylum between legal points of entry

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump on Thursday delivered a very vague speech on immigration. He promised to keep undocumented immigrants in detention until they were deported and to prevent asylum seekers from seeking asylum when they were caught crossing the border. outside the legal entry points.

Both measures should be prosecuted in federal courts. Under current law, immigrants are allowed to apply for asylum anywhere in the United States, no matter the procedure of entry.

And the Trump administration would also violate international asylum law, said Scott Anderson, David M. Rubinstein Scholar in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution.

"United States treaty obligations require that the United States extend asylum to persons who qualify to be considered refugees if they are in the United States or Canada. a US border, whether they have arrived legally or not, "said Mr. Anderson. "The same treaties also prohibit the United States from deporting qualified persons or returning them to their country of origin in the absence of certain extraordinary circumstances."

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on how the administration was considering establishing its legal authority to amend the asylum law through executive action.

Here is an excerpt from Trump's speech that is incorrect or misleading.

Declaration: Immigrants are now released only because the government does not have enough space to hold them. To solve this problem, Trump has promised to significantly expand the space of detention with so-called tent cities at the border.

Made: There are reasons, besides the lack of space, that the US Immigration and Customs Service is not allowed to detain migrants for an indefinite period. A 2001 Supreme Court decision in a case known as Zadvydas limited to six months the time that ICE may detain adult immigrants in administrative detention. And a Federal Court decision that was upheld in 2015, known as Flores, limits the length of detention of children in ICE custody to 20 days.

Declaration: The Trump administration was pursuing an Obama era policy of separating immigrant children from their parents at the border.

Made: The Obama administration separated the children from their parents only if they were to be charged with a crime, not to mention the charges of illegal crossing of the border. Last spring, under the "zero tolerance" regime, the Trump administration changed this policy in order to start charging, and thus to separate, the parents whose only crime was to cross the border illegally. This has dramatically increased the number of parents and children separated from about 100 per month to over 1,300 per month.

Declaration: There are 20 million undocumented immigrants in the United States.

Made: Although it is impossible to know exactly how many there are, the Department of Homeland Security estimates that this number would be closer to 12 million.

Declaration: Construction on the boundary wall is underway.

Made: Although a fence was constructed and existing structures were repaired, no concrete was poured onto a new boundary wall.

Julia Ainsley

Julia Ainsley is a national security reporter for NBC News.