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"Regardless of legal status, seek help for coronavirus" 3:03
(CNN) - The United States Government is lobbying to use the coronavirus pandemic to achieve some of the harsh immigration restrictions that hardliners have struggled to implement since President Donald Trump took office. , including blocking entry to asylum seekers, US officials reported on the plans.
A plan to return all migrants seeking asylum would have its most immediate effect on the border between the United States and Mexico. This has faced opposition from various government agencies, in part because of concerns that it would violate US and international law, including treaties on dealing with refugees and torture victims.
Authorities are working on a plan to deny entry to all asylum seekers, according to multiple sources. That may include a plan to return all who cross the border illegally without due process.
"It is an unprecedented closure of the southwest border," said a senior official with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). "End any due process for the time being and return to the people."
US citizens and lawful permanent residents will continue to be allowed to enter the US, the official said, adding that the ban will not apply to cargo shipments. However, it is unclear whether others will be allowed to continue crossing legally.
When asked for comment, DHS spokeswoman Heather Swift said in a statement: "President Trump is one hundred percent focused on protecting the American people," adding that "all options are on the table."
Trump had previously overlooked closing the southern border and attempted to ban migrants who illegally crossed the border from applying for asylum. Legal challenges have kept the administration from moving forward with some of its more restrictive policies, though others remain intact, including its controversial asylum policy of requiring immigrants to wait in Mexico until its U.S. immigration cutoff date.
In recent weeks, Homeland Security officials have lobbied to close the border on the grounds that it was a national security threat posed by refugees and illegal immigrants who may have the virus and spread it to border agents who would later have to be quarantined, officials said.
An official said that hardline immigration enforcement officials have long sought ways to prevent asylum seekers from exposing their case to immigration officials, and that the threat of the coronavirus was being used as an excuse to achieve what that until now they had not been able to do.
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The plan, which has been in the works for weeks and discussed among lawyers for various government agencies, met with opposition from some officials, in part because they did not believe that the virus outbreak met the criteria for circumventing US and international law. , according to officials.
Earlier this month, Acting Assistant Secretary for Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli told reporters that the administration had not identified the coronavirus in the migration flow, a reference to migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border.
"When do you start to find your way in the immigration flow?" he asked himself. "When we see that happen, and we haven't seen it, that will start to affect our calculation on the southern border and we would have to be more aggressive, potentially using some legal authorities that we are not engaging at the moment."
DHS has not said if that has changed since then.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel was asked to review and determine if the pandemic met the criteria for national security exemptions. A Justice spokesman forwarded a request for comment to the White House.
In February, the Border Patrol arrested 30,068 immigrants who were illegally crossing the southern border, according to the latest available data from Customs and Border Protection.
Asylum Immigration