{"title":"The Power to Exclude: The (Mis)Treatment of Unaccompanied Minors under the Trump and Biden Administration","authors":"Christina Gerken","doi":"10.1007/s12142-024-00721-y","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p>In “The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants” (hereinafter “Biden Plan“), then-candidate Joe Biden promised to “reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees.” Three years into his presidency, how far has the Biden Administration come in their efforts to create a more humane asylum system? And has the treatment of unaccompanied minors seen any significant improvements? This article examines the Trump Administration’s attempts to permanently alter the US asylum system. After trying to categorically ban all claims that were based on persecution by “private actors,” the Trump Administration seized on the COVID-19 pandemic as a convenient pretext for taking away even some of the most basic human rights protections that asylum-seekers have enjoyed for generations. This article will argue that the Biden Administration, despite their efforts to restore some basic protections, continues to criminalize and institutionalize many unaccompanied minors.</p>","PeriodicalId":45171,"journal":{"name":"Human Rights Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Human Rights Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-024-00721-y","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LAW","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
In “The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants” (hereinafter “Biden Plan“), then-candidate Joe Biden promised to “reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees.” Three years into his presidency, how far has the Biden Administration come in their efforts to create a more humane asylum system? And has the treatment of unaccompanied minors seen any significant improvements? This article examines the Trump Administration’s attempts to permanently alter the US asylum system. After trying to categorically ban all claims that were based on persecution by “private actors,” the Trump Administration seized on the COVID-19 pandemic as a convenient pretext for taking away even some of the most basic human rights protections that asylum-seekers have enjoyed for generations. This article will argue that the Biden Administration, despite their efforts to restore some basic protections, continues to criminalize and institutionalize many unaccompanied minors.
期刊介绍:
Human Rights Review is an interdisciplinary journal which provides a scholarly forum in which human rights issues and their underlying empirical, theoretical and philosophical foundations are explored. The journal seeks to place human rights practices and policies within a theoretical perspective in order to link empirical research to broader human rights issues. Human Rights Review welcomes submissions from all academic areas in order to foster a wide-ranging dialogue on issues of concern to both the academic and the policy-making communities. The journal is receptive to submissions drawing from diverse methodologies and approaches including case studies, quantitative analysis, legal scholarship and philosophical discourse in order to provide a comprehensive discussion concerning human rights issues.