Hofstra Law Review
Abstract
Control over the U.S. southern border has become one of the most contentious issues in American politics. Any migrant who crosses that border into the United States has a statutory right to seek asylum. Butthe process for adjudicating asylum claims in the nation’s immigration courts has essentially collapsed, with waiting times for hearings averaging about four years. During those years, an asylum applicant can remain in the United States with a right to work, and many politicians and commentators believe that migrants have therefore been incentivized to cross the border either by rafting across the Rio Grande or hiking through remote deserts, intending to turn themselves in to border agents and start the long process of immigration court adjudication. Elected officials of both parties have tried since 1996, mostly unsuccessfully, to deter the influx of migrants by imposing procedural and substantive limitations on asylum, some of which were invalidated by courts or repealed by subsequent administrations. Migration over the border reached record levels in 2023 and became a major political liability for the Biden administration. The issue of border control, including claims that a broken asylum system was partially responsible for a surge of migrants, became the second most prominent issue (after the price of groceries) in the 2024 presidential election. The House of Representatives passed a bill that would have severely limited the availability of asylum. The Biden administration promulgated new rules, currently being challenged in federal court, that barred asylum for migrants who crossed the southern border without permission and imposed a more restrictive standard for assessing “credible fear” in the summary process known as “expedited removal.”
Recommended Citation
Schrag, Philip G.
(2024)
"The Border Crisis and the Right to Seek Asylum,"
Hofstra Law Review: Vol. 53:
Iss.
1, Article 4.
Available at:
https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/hlr/vol53/iss1/4
