ADELANTO, Calif. — Moisés Valentín, a pastor at the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and I drove two hours outside of Los Angeles, to the middle of nowhere, high in the Mojave Desert. There, surrounded by sagebrush scrub and crowned in concertina wire, was the Adelanto Detention Facility, the nation’s largest prison for adult immigrants. Many of the people detained there are seeking asylum, running less toward the American dream than away from a Central American nightmare.

Pastor Valentín wasn’t there to save their souls. He goes twice a month to try to save them from the United States government, which is treating them with unspeakable cruelty in violation of its own laws.

Opponents of immigration have long had one rallying cry: rule of law! But most of the people seeking asylum at the Adelanto Detention Facility followed the law to a T. They presented themselves at ports of entry on our southern border and asked for asylum. The Trump administration seems to be using every tactic possible to prevent them from gaining that asylum, even if they clearly qualify.

This spring Attorney General Jeff Sessions told immigration judges that they must rule on at least 700 cases a year. There’s no way they can realistically consider the evidence and still meet that quota; it’s much faster to just reject people’s claims. Then last month Mr. Sessions announced that domestic and gang violence — the most common reasons for fleeing Central America — would generally no longer qualify someone for asylum.