The Trump Administration’s new criminal bars to asylum will dramatically reduce the availability of asylum to people fleeing persecution and further their criminalization. The unprecedented expansion of these categorical bars rely on racially biased policing practices and prosecutions, are vague and sweeping, and contradict the INA’s plain language and the United States’ international commitments. The suit is filed on behalf of four non-profit organizations that serve asylum applicants: Pangea Legal Services, Dolores Street Community Services, Capital Area Immigrant Rights Coalition, and Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc. (CLINIC). NIPNLG, Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), the Harvard Immigration & Refugee Clinic (HIRC) and the law firm Sidley Austin, LLP, filed the complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
UPDATE: November 19, 2020
A federal judge in the Northern District of California issued a nationwide injunction against the Trump Administration’s new rule that would have dramatically restricted asylum eligibility for asylum seekers convicted of low-level offenses and even people who are not convicted of a crime.