COURTS/DHS/IMMIGRATION/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump is calling on top immigration officials to take steps that toughen and accelerate the process for seeking asylum in the United States. In a memo issued Monday [4-29-19] evening, Trump ordered the development of regulations to bar certain asylum seekers from obtaining work authorization, impose fees on applications, speed up court decisions and limit access to other forms of relief. The measures — framed as a response to a surge of migrants at the southwest border — would represent a further escalation of Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda. However, they will not immediately go into effect. Instead, the president called on the secretaries of the Homeland Security and Justice departments to ‘take all appropriate actions’ to implement the restrictive goals within 90 days. Still, the prospective regulations called for in Monday’s memo — if and when they are issued — will almost certainly face court challenges. The Trump administration has experimented with a range of policies to discourage the arrival of Central American families and children at the border, but without much discernible success.”
–Ted Hesson and Wesley Morgan, “Trump calls for changes to toughen path to asylum,” Politico, April 29, 2019 6:53 pm