Trump’s immigration policies are against both international and US law. As Juan Cole writes in an article published yesterday on common dreams.org, they’re also part of an “overall refugee policy. In essence, the Trump administration is attempting gradually to abolish the acceptance by the US of asylum seekers, in stark contravention to US treaty obligations and hence to domestic US law. These measures are being taken at a time when the world refugee crisis is more acute, with 68 million displaced, than at any time since World War II.

From October 15, 2017 to the present, only 15,383 refugees were legally admitted to the US. In previous years up to 40% of those given asylum were Muslims, but almost none of those recently admitted are. Refugee rights organizations reckon that the US will accept only 25,000 refugees this year, down from 110,000 in Obama’s last year. Trump had reduced the ceiling for refugees to 50,000, but has put in place obstacles to the process that result in only half that number coming in.

The United States didn’t sign the 1951 Convention on the Treatment of Refugees, which concerned the refugees created by WWII, but did sign the 1967 Protocol to that treaty, which commits it to abide by articles 2-34 of the Convention and to apply its provisions to those made refugees after WWII. The Protocol binds Trump to act in concert with the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, who has just denounced Trump.

Jeff Sessions is not abiding by the terms of the Protocol. Although he keeps maintaining in public that refugees will have their applications for asylum processed if they present them at a regular border crossing, the evidence is that such applications are being summarily dismissed by immigration officials, who – against the law – aren’t permitting asylum-seekers access to counsel or judges. As for his policy of arresting undocumented immigrants for the misdemeanor of crossing the border even where they are asylum-seekers from political persecution, this is a violation of international and of US domestic law.

Relief Web points out that ‘under Article 31 of the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which the United States is bound by its accession to the 1967 Refugee Protocol, parties “shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.”’

Sessions has also removed abuse of women as a grounds for seeking asylum, even though in Honduras and other countries from which asylum-seekers come, police and authoritarian males often use abuse and rape as methods of controlling and silencing women dissidents.”