The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security adopted an interim final rule related to asylum which went into effect on Tuesday, July 16, 2019.
The interim rule purports to change the law for processing asylum claims in the context of aliens who enter or attempt to enter the United States across the southern land border and establishes a new mandatory bar for asylum eligibility.
According to the new rule, an individual who enters or attempts to enter the United States across the southern border after failing to apply for protection in a third country outside the alien’s country of citizenship, nationality, or last lawful habitual residence through which the individual transited en route to the United States is ineligible for asylum.
The American Civil Liberties Union has just filed a challenge to the new third country rule in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.
