Rafia Zakaria is the author of "The Upstairs Wife: An Intimate History of Pakistan" (Beacon 2015) and "Veil" (Bloomsbury 2017). She is a columnist for Dawn newspaper in Pakistan and The Baffler. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) The impending end of granting asylum to refugees by the United States was announced in a presidential memo. On Monday, President Donald Trump asked the Department of Homeland Security to develop proposals requiring those seeking asylum to pay processing fees for their applications and to severely limit their access to work permits.

These proposed changes are not the only ways in which the Trump administration has nipped and hacked at the United States' asylum laws and rules. On April 17, Attorney General William Barr decided that asylum seekers who are in detention but who have passed their initial interviews would not be eligible for bond, opening the possibility of indefinite detention for asylum seekers. The week before that, the administration announced plans that would make border patrol agents (instead of US Citizenship and Immigration Services) responsible for initial interviews with asylees -- with the intention of reducing the total number that are found eligible.

Rafia Zakaria

These proposed changes, along with the others that have preceded them, will all but eliminate asylum as a legal option to anyone fleeing persecution. When asylum seekers arrive on US soil and make a claim for asylum, they are likely destitute, having fled for their lives. The reason that no fees were previously required for asylum applications was because of the commonsense acknowledgment that if one person was prevented from applying owing to the fees, it would be a gross injustice.

Even if asylees are able to pay the fees that Trump has asked for, many more hurdles will await them. Under a new pilot program, asylum applicants could then face questioning by a border patrol guard who will evaluate whether they have a "credible fear of persecution." The problem with this new proposed plan, which empowers border guards at the expense of US customs officials, is that it puts law enforcement officials in the position of interpreting and applying the law as well.

Its equivalent would be to make a police officer who makes an arrest the judge at the first court hearing. To an administration that wants to restrict immigration at all costs, however, that sounds like a perfect plan.