Immigration experts warn the Trump asylum policy at the southern border has sharply reduced legal pathways for migrants seeking protection in the United States.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow with the American Immigration Council, says the Trump administration has eliminated almost all legal pathways for asylum-seekers wanting to enter the United States.
Reichlin-Melnick appeared on Border Report Live on Wednesday. He tells South Texas correspondent Sandra Sanchez and host Rudy Mireles that it is effectively impossible to seek asylum at the southern border.
“Migrants cannot go to ports of entry to seek asylum. And even the limited ways in which they were processing people in ports of entry in Trump’s first term have been cut off,” he said.
His comments come after the release of a McAllen family that had recently been detained by ICE. An ICE official earlier this week said the family had “illegally” entered the United States in May 2023. They were detained and arrested when they went for a mandatory routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Feb. 25.
An ICE spokesperson said: “The family unit illegally entered the U.S. in 2023 near Brownsville, Texas, and were released into the country by the Biden administration. The law requires illegal aliens who show up at a port of entry without valid entry to be detained while all their claims are heard. You can look it up in the statute. Unlike the previous administration, the Trump administration is not going to ignore the rule of law.”
But Reichlin-Melnick says when Emma Guadalupe Cuellar Lopez, Luis Antonio Gamez Martinez, their 18-year-old son Antonio Gamez-Cuellar, and two younger sons entered the United States in May 2023, they used the CBP One app to schedule an appointment with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at a port of entry. There, they passed a credible-fear interview, according to several legislators.
Reichlin-Melnick says at the time, that was a very legal way of entering the country. However, it is no longer available and the Trump administration has discontinued the app and has canceled all asylum appointments.
“They did not illegally enter the country,” he said. “The CBP One app process was a system set up by the Biden administration in 2023 to standardize the process for people.”
“It’s so disheartening to see people who chose to do everything by the books — by the way the government was telling them to — now be accused of illegally entering the country when the government’s own records show that’s not true,” he said.
Antonio was arrested and detained and held separately from his parents and two younger brothers at an ICE detention facility in Raymondville, Texas. The family was held at the ICE facility in Dilley, Texas.
But after public outcry and speaking up for the family, ICE on Monday suddenly released them on parole while their immigration cases remain pending.
