In presidential memo, Trump directs officials to take additional measures to overhaul the asylum system.

US President Donald Trump is proposing charging asylum seekers a fee to process their applications as he continues to try to crack down on the surge of Central American migrants seeking to cross into the United States.

In a presidential memorandum signed on Monday, Trump directed his attorney general and acting homeland security secretary to take additional measures to overhaul the asylum system, which he insists “is in crisis” and plagued by “rampant abuse”.

The changes are just the latest in a series of proposals from an administration that is struggling to cope with a surge of migrant families arriving at the southern border. Most of those arriving say they are fleeing violence and poverty, and many request asylum under US and international law.

As part of the memo, Trump is giving officials 90 days to come up with new regulations to ensure that applications are adjudicated within 180 days of filing, except under exceptional circumstances.

And he is directing officials to begin charging a fee to process asylum and employment authorisation applications, which do not currently require payment.

The White House and Department of Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to questions about how much applicants might be forced to pay, and it is unclear how many families fleeing poverty would be able to afford such a payment.

The memo says the price would not exceed the cost of processing applications, but officials did not immediately provide an estimate for what that might be.

‘Sickening’

Some Democrats criticised the proposal. Julian Castro, who is running for the Democratic nomination in the 2020 presidential election, called the plan “truly sickening”.

Families are fleeing violence and turmoil to seek refuge at our borders and Donald Trump wants to charge them a fee to gain asylum. Truly sickening. https://t.co/gCWy1lkJX6 — Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) April 30, 2019

Trump also wants to bar anyone who has entered or tried to enter the country irregularly from receiving a provisional work permit and is calling on officials to immediately revoke work authorisations when people are denied asylum and ordered removed from the country.

The Republican president also is calling on Homeland Security to reassign immigration officers and any other staff “to improve the integrity of adjudications of credible and reasonable fear claims, to strengthen the enforcement of the immigration laws, and to ensure compliance with the law by those aliens who have final orders of removal”.

Arrests along the southern border have skyrocketed in recent months, with border agents making more than 100,000 arrests or denials of entry in March, a 12-year high.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen resigned in early April amid Trump’s increasing frustration over how many Central American families were crossing the US-Mexico border.