Adobe Images On Inauguration Day, at the beginning of his second term, President Trump closed the door to refugees and asylum seekers. On the Fourth of July 2025, he locked it. Now, he has sealed the door off with mortar and brick.
Thus has this administration slammed shut more than 250 years of U.S. welcome to the persecuted, from the pilgrims at Plymouth to the Afghan interpreters for U.S. forces stranded in Qatar, whom the U.S. now says should go instead to the Democratic Republic of Congo.”
The door closed on Jan. 20, 2025, with a presidential proclamation of an “invasion” by “aliens” at the U.S. southern border, the stated rationale for terminating the right to apply for asylum on US soil.
On the same day, executive orders indefinitely suspended the U.S. refugee resettlement program worldwide; closed the Safe Mobility offices in Latin America where refugees were processed; ended humanitarian parole programs for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans; and terminated the use of the CBP One phone application that had enabled asylum seekers to make appointments at the U.S. border. The app was repurposed and weaponized to facilitate and track so-called “self-deportations.”
Then came the lock: Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on Independence Day last year, poured $46.5 billion into building the border wall and bolstering border enforcement resources, and another $45 billion to triple Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention and deportation capacity.
Trump threw away the key with his travel bans, now imposed to varying degrees on 39 countries and the Palestinian territories — a list that includes the world’s major refugee-producing countries. Then Trump added deadbolts to the door, reprogramming personnel and resources from the Department of Defense, the FBI, FEMA, the DEA, the IRS, the Social Security Administration and other federal, state and local agencies to immigration enforcement.
Now, the Trump administration has begun sealing off the door with brick and mortar. The Supreme Court just handed Trump the bricks, ruling that the U.S. can now block asylum seekers from stepping onto U.S. territory at official border crossings. This effectively renders asylum seekers ineligible for protections, as federal law specifies that applicants “arrive” in the U.S. before applying.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio already provided the mortar in April: a cable that says, effective immediately, all consular officers must ask each nonimmigrant visa applicant to “affirm that he or she does not fear harm or mistreatment in returning to his or her country of nationality or former habitual residence.” Unless the applicant verbally answers “No,” he or she will automatically be refused.
With all other safe and legal pathways for protection blocked, this effectively seals the door for anyone needing to flee persecution and seeking U.S. protection. If applicants answer honestly, and says they have been mistreated and fear return, they will be denied a visa. If, for the sake of survival, they do not tell the truth and then apply for asylum, they will be denied for having lied on their visa application.
For years, the complaint from the anti-immigrant crowd has been that bogus asylum seekers jump the line and flout orderly, regular ways to immigrate or file refugee claims. But this administration vilifies and disqualifies asylum seekers as illegal, while simultaneously giving them no legal path to escape their dangerous home countries.
As Trump seeks to create and remake national monuments to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary, the alterations that would most reflect his administration’s understanding of U.S. values would be replacing Lady Liberty’s torch with a stop sign, and filling in his proposed triumphal arch creation with a brick wall.
Bill Frelick is the refugee and migrant rights director at Human Rights Watch.
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