Trump Created this “Emergency,” SPLC files Lawsuit Against Another Trump Immigration Policy Today

Statement of Mary Bauer, Deputy Legal Director, the Southern Poverty Law Center on the Emergency Declaration from Trump:

"The notion that this manufactured crisis is a national emergency is ridiculous. The only national emergency in relation to our nation’s immigration policy is the President’s relentless war on asylum seekers and immigrants. It is this administration’s attempts to evade and even rewrite federal and international law that have created a humanitarian crisis on our southern border.   Migrants seeking to apply for asylum are the victims here.

"In action after action, the President has sought to shut down our asylum system to vulnerable migrants.  First, the Administration refused to process people presenting at Ports of Entry; then he declared a ban on asylum for those entering at places other than Ports of Entry; then he declared that asylum seekers would be returned to Mexico even when unsafe there.  This declaration is more of the same—a war on asylum, a status created to offer refuge to the desperate and persecuted.  We have filed suit to challenge each of these efforts, including a lawsuit challenging the President’s “remain in Mexico” policy filed earlier today.

"This declaration takes these efforts to circumvent our law to a new level and will no doubt be challenged in the courts like the rest.  We won’t stop fighting these assaults on our national values."