For the past several years, a patchwork of policies have illegally restricted people fleeing persecution from seeking safety at the U.S.-Mexico border. Although Title 42, one of the most restrictive policies, has finally come to an end, the Biden administration immediately replaced it with a new asylum ban straight from Trump’s playbook, rather than focusing on real solutions to a more fair and efficient immigration system. Just as we did when Trump erected illegal barriers to asylum, the ACLU and our partners quickly sued. But we still have our work cut out for us in the fight to protect the right seek asylum in the U.S.

As the U.S.-Mexico border continues to make headlines, this topic may come up in conversations. To restore humanity to U.S. asylum policy, we need to center human dignity, truth, and justice in our conversations. This guide will help you do just that.

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1. Seeking asylum is a human right protected under international and U.S. laws.
2. People may come to the U.S. or the border to seek asylum and must prove their cases to be granted permanent protection.
3. Many policies threaten the human and legal right to seek asylum from persecution, but none succeed in deterring people from trying to seek protection at the border.
4. Despite obstacles, asylum seekers become integral members of our communities.
5. Money spent policing the border can be better spent establishing a fair, orderly, and welcoming asylum process.

For those who aren’t already interested in these issues, our laws might seem abstract or arcane. One of the best ways to understand and convey their importance is by sharing the stories of people who are fighting for their right to seek asylum and are directly impacted by the policies that make headlines.

• My Family Came to Seek Asylum, But Found Danger Instead
• Searching for Peace: The difficult and dangerous journey to seek asylum in the United States, Part I
• Searching for Peace: The difficult and dangerous journey to seek asylum in the United States, Part II

Credit: Aimee Melo/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

• The right to seek asylum — or safety from persecution — in another country was born out of the tragedies of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. In its aftermath, dozens of nations committed to never again slam the door on people in need of protection. The right to asylum was enshrined in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.
• The United States is a party to the Refugee Protocol and passed the Refugee Act of 1980 to comply with its international obligations. The Act protects people who are fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
• The Refugee Act is meant to ensure that people who seek asylum from within the U.S. or at its border are not sent back to places where they face persecution.
• These protections are just as critical today. More people have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict, violence, and human rights violations in recent years than at any other time since World War II.

All people fleeing persecution are allowed to seek asylum under our laws. Period.

• Biden’s new asylum ban, based on Trump’s entry and transit bans, attempts to force people to seek asylum from Mexico or another country they passed through. Narrow exceptions exist, most notably for people able to secure a scarce appointment to apply in the U.S. through the flawed CBP One mobile app. It will leave the most vulnerable people in much the same position as Trump’s policy did — at risk and unfairly denied the protection of asylum for reasons that have nothing to do with their need for refuge.
• Title 42, first implemented by the Trump administration under the guise of public health, was used for three years to expel people fleeing violence and persecution, rather than considering their claims. Expulsions under Title 42 led to more than 13,000 documented cases of violent attacks, including rape, torture, and abduction, and have subjected Black and LGBTQ asylum seekers to particular risks. A federal judge recently ordered its end, but some politicians are fighting to keep it in place.
• The “Remain in Mexico” policy, first implemented by the Trump administration, forced people to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico while their asylum cases proceeded in the U.S. The Biden administration attempted to end this policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that it has the authority to do so.
• So-called “deterrence” policies aim to stop people from exercising the right to seek asylum through the threat of harm or punishment, such as family separation, mandatory detention, and criminalization.
• Other policies aim to prevent people from requesting asylum to begin with, such as through severe metering or unlawfully denying asylum to people entering the U.S. at the Southern border who did not first apply for asylum in Mexico or another third country they transited through.

American Civil Liberties Union

Five Things to Know About the Title 42 Immigrant Expulsion Policy | ACLU

Since March 2020, the government has misused the order to kick out people seeking asylum more than 1.7 million times.

• These policies subject people who have already endured violence and persecution to further harm, including rape, torture, and abduction in many cases, by denying them the chance to seek safety and sending them back into harm’s way.
• Although elected officials have claimed these policies discourage migrants from coming to the border, evidence shows they do not stop people from seeking safety and ultimately create more disorder.
• Expulsions under Title 42, for example, have had the opposite effect of deterring people. They have encouraged people seeking protection to repeatedly attempt to cross the border to find safety.
• Even after imposing the strictest and most punitive rules against asylum seekers, President Trump faced sharp increases in the numbers of migrants at the border, at that time the highest numbers in over a decade.

• Anti-immigrant politicians continue to peddle falsehoods and racist tropes about an “invasion” to instill fear and win support for harmful policies. Ahead of the midterms, America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy organization, identified over 3,200 different paid communications that employed anti-immigrant attacks.
• Governors of Texas and Florida have used asylum seekers as political props, placing them on flights and buses to communities like Martha’s Vineyard, to make headlines and perpetuate a fear-based narrative around the border.
• Despite these attacks, the vast majority of Americans support asylum rights. According to a poll conducted by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, nearly three-quarters of Americans (73.4 percent) agree that the United States should provide access to the U.S. asylum system to people fleeing persecution and/or violence.

Credit: John Lamparski/NurPhoto via AP

• We need a more efficient, humane, and welcoming system at the border for people seeking asylum.
• Much of the money Congress now spends on a bloated Border Patrol police force should be spent instead on humane reception and screening of people at the border and on making sure our immigration agencies and federal courts have enough employees and judges to decide asylum claims in a fair, orderly, and timely manner.
• This money could also be used to support people in reaching family members or sponsors in the locations where they will wait for the government to decide their claims and to more quickly process work permits for asylum seekers so they can support themselves and contribute to their communities. One recent study estimated that on average, an asylum seeker contributes over $19,000 per year to the U.S. economy, and that a 25 percent reduction in the number of all people seeking asylum in the country would cause an economic loss of $20.5 billion over a five-year period.

The policies discussed in this guide present a serious threat to the future of asylum rights, but we’ll continue to fight back through our ongoing litigation, in the halls of Congress, and through public education. And we’re not stopping there. We’re fighting for a fundamentally more humane and welcoming system at the border for people seeking asylum — and you can, too.

Here are four ways you can join the fight to protect the right to seek asylum no matter where you live.

1. Use this guide to speak to your friends and family and educate them on the importance of protecting asylum rights.
2. Send a message to President Biden telling him to reverse course on his asylum ban.
3. Visit the ACLU Border Humanity Project — a campaign to fight for humane border policies — for other ways to get involved.

San Francisco was embroiled in controversy earlier this month over a proposal to allow police to deploy robots armed with deadly weapons. After initially greenlighting the technology, the Board of Supervisors reversed course due to widespread public outcry. For the time being, killer robots are banned in San Francisco, but the controversy there has put the issue in the national spotlight. People are increasingly aware that this technology exists and that some police departments want to deploy it.

Our overarching position is that the police should be prohibited from using robots to enact violence. Robots should not be used to kill, subdue, push, constrain, or otherwise control or harm people. Judging from the near unanimous protests in San Francisco and other cities, the public agrees.

It’s simply too dangerous to arm robots. While anybody can come up with hypothetical stories in which the use of police killer robots might sound reasonable, such “movie-plot scenarios” are just the tiny tip of a large pyramid of instances in which police use force — many of which are totally unjustified and take place in a legal context that protects almost all officers from accountability. Since 2013, over 98 percent of police shootings have not resulted in criminal charges against the officer. And in recent years the police have continued to kill around a thousand people a year — with Black people three times more likely to be killed by the police than white people.

AP Photo/Jeff Chiu

As we have long argued with respect to both domestic drones and other robots, tools that allow force to be used remotely and risk free for the operator make it inevitable that force will be overused, and increase the chances that it will be used sloppily, hitting unintended targets. Signals between the remote operator and the robot may also be degraded due to communications and control problems — or even hacked. Under any proper cost/benefit calculus, the negative effects of introducing armed robots into police departments would far outweigh any benefits.

The public is not alone in its opposition to robot violence. There is a general consensus in law enforcement that flying robots — aka drones — should never be armed in domestic contexts. A 2021 New York Police Department experiment with robot dogs that didn’t include any discussion of weaponization was still cut short by public opposition, and the nation’s foremost manufacturer of legged robots, Boston Dynamics, which makes the robot dog “Spot,” commendably forbids the arming of its robots, and says it will revoke the license of any customer that arms them.

Since the NYPD controversy, however, some police departments have continued to use robot dogs, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced that it was experimenting with the technology on the border, in both cases without weapons. But another robot dog manufacturer, Ghost Robotics, has already built a rifle-toting robot marketed to the military (the company’s slogan: “the warfighter’s best friend”). In 2016, Dallas police killed a gunman during a mass shooting using a wheeled bomb-squad robot jerry-rigged with explosives, in the nation’s first and only robot use of deadly force. And now we’ve seen the police in San Francisco push back against a ban on weaponized robots.

No matter how many protestations some police departments and manufacturers may make about their lack of interest in arming robots, the possibility will continue to hang out there like a forbidden fruit unless it is made illegal.

It seems likely, however, that domestic law enforcement agencies will find uses for robots even if weaponization and use of force are banned. As the technology continues to improve, they will be deemed too useful not to become widespread in society — and law enforcement will not be an island of abstention as the technology is routinely deployed for various uses. In fact, the use of ground robots by police bomb squads is already widespread, as is the use of drones.

Nevertheless, police use of the technology to interact with civilians is a unique matter — a different beast than the use of robots in industrial, employment, or household contexts, or even by police bomb squads. Police engage in fraught, power-laden interactions with civilians. Robots, no matter how they are used, represent an extension of officers’ power to act in the physical world.

Police robots may in the future introduce risks we can’t now imagine, but there are some civil liberties threats beyond weaponization that are already apparent. Robots may enter private property and gather video and other data, which can create privacy risks. That’s already a major issue with flying robots, of course. Mission creep is also a concern. For example, the primary use case envisioned for police robot dogs is to assist in hostage and barricade situations by scouting, delivering food, and the like. (Drones are also being marketed for this purpose.) But if the technology is sold to the public for that purpose, it’s likely to expand to all manner of other uses. In Honolulu, the police used their robot dog to scout homeless encampments.

Fear and dehumanization are also a risk. Years of science fiction have primed people to find robot dogs spooky, but such fears are not to be dismissed as irrational or “merely atmospheric.” Some police departments have used militarized equipment to frighten and intimidate, a tactic called a “show of force.” Such tactics chill dissent and, when used routinely, degrade people’s quality of life. A robot dog may be, strictly speaking, just a tool, but the fact that people find it frightening matters.

Given these potential problems, what should policymakers do when communities decide that they approve of police ground robots for various non-violent uses? Our recommendation would be that communities put the following principles into law:

Robots (including drones) should not be equipped with weapons of any kind designed or intended for use against people, or permitted to use force of any kind against people including pushing, nudging, or pressing them. Bomb-disposal robots of the kind already widely deployed, which are not designed to interact with humans, would be permitted.

No ground robot should enter private property unless a police officer would have a legal right to be there, by judicial warrant or “exigent circumstances.” Courts will very likely compel this policy under the Fourth Amendment, but in the meantime, it should be enacted into law. Communities should also require a warrant to conduct surveillance in any situation in which a police officer would be required to obtain a warrant to conduct electronic surveillance.

Too often we see police deploy controversial high-tech devices without telling, let alone asking, the communities they serve, using money from sources such as corrupt asset forfeiture programs or federal grants. Robots should not be deployed unless approved by a community’s city council or other elected oversight body in accordance with our recommended “Community Control Over Police Surveillance.” Elected officials should also consider limiting permission for the deployment of robots to a list of enumerated uses. If that later blocks some unanticipated use that people think makes sense, the police can easily come back to the city council and ask for permission, and an open discussion can ensue.

Communities can’t debate high-tech police tools if they don’t know about them. San Francisco residents only learned about the SFPD’s robots due to a recent state law that required police departments to disclose the military technology and weaponry within their arsenal. Communities that decide to allow police ground robots should follow the recommendations for public notice and auditing and effectiveness tracking that we have already called for where police want to deploy drones.

In 2022, our civil rights were challenged in unprecedented ways — from the overturn of Roe v. Wade, to mounting classroom censorship bills, to the scores of legal attacks on LGBTQ+ youth. But the ACLU and our supporters are no stranger to fighting against these unconstitutional onslaughts. This year, we showed up to protect civil rights through every avenue we could — and saw many victories along the way. Quiz yourself below to learn some of the ways we advocated our way to meaningful change this year.

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