Today, the administration proposed regulations that aim to overturn U.S. asylum law, making it effectively impossible for people fleeing persecution to obtain protection in the United States. If implemented, the rule would eliminate gender-based asylum—shutting the door to anyone fleeing life-threatening persecution due to their gender, while undoing decades of legal precedent. Women fleeing rape and severe domestic violence, LGBTQ+ individuals facing deadly attacks, and those escaping other fatal gender-based harms will no longer be allowed to seek safety within our borders if the regulations take effect.
“The new regulations aim to end asylum, but the harm does not stop there,” said Archi Pyati, Tahirih Chief of Policy and Communications. “This is part of a targeted attack on immigrant communities and a culmination of racist and xenophobic policies that have built an invisible wall at our borders and sown divisions among us. They have undermined our nation’s obligations to the international community and stripped us of the oneness of our humanity.”
The administration’s proposed regulations are an assault on the fundamental right to seek asylum. If fully implemented, they will gut years of progress in the U.S. to create bridges to safety for so many whose governments could not and would not protect them from severe harm and even death. Moreover, these regulations specifically endanger and target survivors of gender-based violence and will make it all but impossible for them to achieve justice.
“These regulations are the final nail in the coffin of ever-increasing barriers to access asylum. If enacted, the rule would treat asylum seekers as nothing more than a nuisance unworthy of consideration or care,” said Richard Caldarone, Tahirih Litigation Counsel. “It would complete the transformation of immigration courts into conveyor belts in a deportation machine that rapidly returns people to violence, torture, and death without the slightest regard for their humanity. The Tahirih Justice Center intends to challenge the rule by any and all possible means.”
