The Trump administration has launched its most aggressive legal attempt yet to end all immigration to the United States -- an asylum ban. It targets the most vulnerable and desperate, people who are fleeing for their lives from violence, war, and persecution due to their race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, or political membership. Seeking asylum is a human right.

The asylum ban would make anyone who crosses the southern border between ports of entry between November 10, 2018 and February 9, 2019 ineligible for asylum.

This racist, immoral ban has already been temporarily stopped by a federal judge on the grounds that it violates U.S. asylum laws. The Trump administration is already planning to appeal the decision when the hold lifts on December 19th -- they’ll stop at nothing to end all immigration to the U.S.

Tell the Trump Administration: Stop punishing refugees fleeing for their lives. Let them file for asylum!

Congress wrote the laws of asylum to ensure that regardless of where you enter, you are able to file for asylum. When you’re fleeing violence and abuse, you don’t have the luxury of deciding how to get to safety.

It’s no coincidence the Trump administration has been demonizing migrants seeking asylum at the southern border and characterizing migrants as an “invasion” and “animals” and even threatening that “our Military is waiting for you!”. It was a strategic decision to dehumanize people of color who are fleeing for their lives and falls neatly into white nationalist sentiments that we are threats and invaders. This creates a false pretense to send military force to the border -- 5,200 active duty troops as well as helicopters and heavy equipment.

Communities of color, including Asian Americans, are intimately familiar with this portrayal of our families as dangerous others. Many of us and our families sought asylum here because of U.S. military intervention in our ancestral countries that made it unsafe for us to stay. More than 1.2 million Southeast Asian Americans from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam make up the largest refugee community ever resettled in U.S. history. They sought refuge here after decades of the U.S.-backed war in Vietnam, the Secret War in Laos, and the bombings of Cambodia, followed by the ruthless Khmer Rouge-orchestrated genocide.

Others of us sought asylum because we feared persecution for being our genuine selves and that our lives were in danger because of our gender, sexuality, or religion. In conflict zones, gender based violence against women and children is used as a military tactic to disrupt communities, instill social control and is used as a weapon of ethnic cleansing. Southeast Asian women refugees have high levels of psychological distress because of the sexual violence, multiple beatings and rapes they have suffered. And for the women traveling through Mexico to seek asylum at the border, between 60 and 80% of them are raped while fleeing Central American countries that have the highest rates of gender-motivated killing of women in the world. Mothers clutching their babies for miles on end through treacherous conditions deserve to have their cases heard.

Stop the Trump Administration’s latest attempt to end all immigration to the U.S. Let asylum seekers in!

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