Contact: Hayley Burgess, burgess@law.ucla.edu, 626-497-2341

Los Angeles, Calif. – Legal experts at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at the UCLA School of Law are joining growing calls urging U.S. Senators to reject negotiations that threaten to dismantle access to asylum and other humanitarian protections. “Our nation must remain true to its promise to protect all those who come to our shores fleeing persecution. We must never forget the bitter lessons of World War II, when our country turned back refugees who went on to die in the Holocaust,” said Ahilan Arulanantham, Professor from Practice and Faculty Co-Director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at the UCLA School of Law.

Viable pathways to safety in the United States preserve basic rights for those seeking protection and create humane and orderly processes for receiving them. Recent experience with Ukrainian refugees has shown that the government is fully capable of processing thousands of people seeking protection in an orderly way under existing law. But restrictive asylum policies instead foment confusion and disorder, thereby endangering the lives of refugees seeking protection.    

“People who arrive at the border attempting to access their legal right to seek asylum are faced with increasingly restrictive policies, forcing them to remain in vulnerable and uncertain situations,” said Talia Inlender, Deputy Director at the Center for Immigration Law and Policy (CILP) at the UCLA School of Law. “Any proposal that seeks to strip away the most basic asylum protections flagrantly disregards international law, and threatens to pulverize an already crumbling system for those fleeing persecution and torture. We need to expand safe and viable humanitarian pathways, not further restrict them.”

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