Trump Rule To Send Asylum-Seeking Migrants To Other Countries Takes Effect

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th November, 2019) A new Trump administration rule to send asylum-seeking migrants to other countries has gone into effect, a notice published in the Federal Register revealed.

"This rule will apply to all ACAs [Asylum Cooperative Agreements] in force between the United States and countries other than Canada, including bilateral ACAs recently entered into with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras in an effort to share the distribution of hundreds of thousands of asylum claims," the notice said on Tuesday.

The rule, effective as of Tuesday, will have a big impact on migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador who arrive at the United States without claiming asylum in a country prior to arriving at the southern border.

On October 29, acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan said US apprehensions of undocumented immigrants at the US-Mexico border reached more than 970,000 in fiscal year 2019, marking an 88 percent increase from last year.

Caravans of migrants from Central American countries seeking asylum began to move toward the United States through Mexico last fall. US President Donald Trump called the surge of arrivals a crisis and declared a national emergency in February to secure funds to build a wall on the border with Mexico.