President Donald Trump has signed a proclamation that would prevent immigrants from qualifying for asylum if they entered the United States illegally.
“We need people in our country but they have to come in legally and they have to have merit,” Trump said Friday before departing for Paris.
The Department of Justice said in a press release on Friday that migrants who illegally enter the United States through the southern border with Mexico will be ineligible for asylum.
Currently, migrants who enter the United States illegally between ports of entry are able to apply for asylum.
The rule requires all migrants to apply for asylum at US ports of entry along the southern border, according to a document that has been scheduled to be published in the Federal Register on Friday.
Senior US administration officials said during a conference call on Thursday that they were working to ensure they had the resources and manpower at the ports of entry to prepare for any large number of asylum seekers arriving at the border.
The decision comes amid a huge crisis, as some 7,000 migrants, according to UN estimates, are moving towards the US southern border in a bid to obtain asylum.
In an attempt to prevent the migrants from coming into the US, Trump threatened to cut off foreign aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador because the governments of the countries failed to crack down on illegal immigration.
After failing to meet this goal, Trump said that the US was deploying 5,000 military personnel to the US-Mexico border.
Currently, there are more than 5,600 US troops deployed to the border mission, with about 550 actually working on the border in Texas.
