Melissa Crow, senior supervising attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the memorandum is another in a string of the Trump administration's attacks on vulnerable asylum-seekers.
In a memo released late on April 29, President Donald Trump ordered changes for how refugees may apply for asylum to the US, requesting an application fee from asylum-seekers and denying them permission to work depending on how the applicant entered the country. "The biggest loophole drawing illegal aliens to our borders is the use of fraudulent or meritless asylum claims to gain entry into our great country", the news release quoted the president as saying. But that is not the case.
The aim of these proposals, which violate global and national asylum laws and protocols, is to virtually end immigration into the US across the US-Mexican border. As such, they are caught in a triple whammy.
The memorandum did not mention the cost of the asylum application. "People should be allowed to exercise those rights when seeking to seek asylum".
The foundation of global refugee law is the prohibition on sending refugees back to face threats to their lives or freedom; it is not reserved for those who can pay.
Asylum seekers waiting to get into the USA sleep in small tents set up by the border, depending on volunteers and churches to bring them food and clothing.
Trump signed an executive order in November that sought to ban anyone who crossed the USA border illegally from seeking asylum. The callousness of this proposal is surpassed only by its pettiness.
Trump also wants to bar anyone who has entered or tried to enter the country illegally from receiving a provisional work permit and is calling on officials to immediately revoke work authorizations when people are denied asylum and ordered removed from the country.
Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security is appealing for more money to handle the surge of migrants.
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And he is directing officials to begin charging a fee to process asylum and employment authorization applications - which don't now require payment.
The memo also proposes regulations to require almost all asylum applications to be decided in immigration court within 180 days of filing, not including appeals.
Trump gave the Attorney General and the head of Homeland Security 90 days to fulfill the policy requests.
The order also requires that all cases in immigration court be settled within 180 days.
The memo outlined other changes including charging asylum seekers to file work permit applications, and barring people who enter the US illegally - or attempt to - from receiving temporary work permits before being approved for relief.
Carrying out the president's orders will be an early test for McAleenan, who was named acting secretary this month.
While asylum cases are already meant to be finished within this timeframe, a backlog of more than 800,000 cases means that asylum claims can take years to be completed. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents encountered more than 103,000 inadmissible migrants at the southern border in March, hitting a 12-year-high.
The same day that he signed the asylum memorandum, Trump tweeted, "The Coyotes and Drug Cartels are in total control of the Mexico side of the Southern Border..."
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