Changing Asylum Policies and Practices in the United States

On February 11, 2019, the National Immigrant Justice Center reported that 49,000 people were being detained in American detention facilities. This report highlights the process of Central American families and unaccompanied minors beginning to apply for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. In my study, I aim to investigate how child and family detention, past and present asylum policies, and treatment of migrants at the border suggest a shift in immigration policy in the Obama and Trump Administrations. The project was divided into two parts; in the first part, I analyzed scholarly literature to compare immigration policy and practice across the past two U.S. presidential administrations. In the second part, I will explore the handling of immigration cases during the past two U.S. presidential administrations through in-depth interviews with attorneys and immigration officials. My findings thus far suggest that both administrations interpreted asylum policies to deter immigration by detaining families, separating families in detention, detaining people for lengthy periods of time, pressuring judges and lawyers to quickly clear detention cases, enforcing expedited removal, and permitting severe conditions in detention facilities, including illnesses and blocked access to legal representation. All of these practices indicate that seeking asylum is becoming more arduous. Although the detention of immigrants seeking asylum began to rise in 1996, I find that it escalated during the past two presidential administrations, and that conditions for asylum seekers are deteriorating. Through this research, I hope to shed light on the difficulties many asylum seekers face and generate ideas about how to improve the process