The ACLU has vowed to sue the administration over the ‘unlawful’ new rules, which raise the asylum eligibility bar

The Trump administration has announced new immigration rules ending asylum protections for almost all migrants who arrive at the US-Mexico border, in violation of both US and international law.

According to the new rules, any asylum seekers who pass through another country before arriving at the southern border – including children traveling on their own – will not be eligible for asylum if they failed to apply first in their country of transit. They would only be eligible for US asylum if their application was turned down elsewhere.

Passage through Mexico: the global migration to the US Read more

The change would affect the vast majority of migrants arriving through Mexico. Most of those currently come from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but an increasing number are from Haiti, Cuba and countries further afield in Africa and Asia.

The new rules were placed on the federal register on Monday and due to take effect on Tuesday, though they will be immediately challenged in court for contraventions of the US refugee act and the UN refugee convention guaranteeing the right to seek asylum to those fleeing persecution from around the world.

Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, said he was deeply concerned by the move. “It will put vulnerable families at risk. It will undermine efforts by countries across the region to devise the coherent, collective responses that are needed. This measure is severe and is not the best way forward,” he said.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the rules were “patently unlawful” and said it would sue the administration to block them taking effect.

In a joint statement, the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice said the rules “add a new bar to eligibility for asylum” for migrants arriving at the southern border “who did not apply for protection from persecution or torture where it was available in at least one third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality or last lawful habitual residence”.

The attorney general, William Barr, said: “This rule will decrease forum shopping by economic migrants and those who seek to exploit our asylum system to obtain entry to the United States, while ensuring that no one is removed from the United States who is more likely than not to be tortured or persecuted on account of a protected ground.”

The US Refugee Act of 1980 limits the right of asylum if the applicant can be sent back to a “safe third country”, but human rights advocates have pointed out that neither Mexico nor any Central American countries come close to meeting the act’s standards of a safe third country, “where the alien’s life or freedom would not be threatened”... “and where the alien would have access to a full an fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum”.

Furthermore, for a country to be considered “safe”, it would have to enter into a formal agreement with the US. In recent months, the US has sought to conclude safe third country agreements with Mexico and Guatemala, but Mexico rejected the initiative and the agreement in Guatemala was blocked on Sunday by that country’s constitutional court. The new rules published on Monday simply ignore the safe third country standard.

Mexico continued to express muted support for asylum seekers, even as the country cracks down on migrants crossing its southern border.

The foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said that the new rules would not apply to Mexicans or turn Mexico into a safe third country. “Mexico doesn’t agree with measures that limits people seeking asylum or refuge,” he said.

The move represents the latest in a series of steps the Trump administration has taken to cut off the flow of migrants through the US-Mexico border. Under the “migrant protection protocols”, the US has required migrants to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided in US immigration courts.

“The Trump administration is yet again attempting to rewrite and violate laws passed by Congress to protect refugees from return to persecution,” said Eleanor Acer, the director of refugee protection at Human Rights First. “This new rule is dangerous, disgraceful and blatantly illegal.”

“This rule will be challenged because it is contrary to the asylum statute and to US obligations to refugees under international law,” Keren Zwick, a litigator at the National Immigrant Justice Centre.

An Amnesty International assessment of the Mexican asylum system found it was “underfunded, absolutely beyond its capacity and inadequate in identifying even valued asylum claims” according to the organisation’s advocacy director for the Americas, Charanya Krishnaswami. The study found that Mexico sent a quarter of applicants back to the countries they were fleeing without due process.

“Those dangers make clear that Mexico would not be a safe place for the many thousands who are seeking protection at the US border,” Krishnaswami said.

Additional reporting by David Agren