U.S. President Donald Trump's administration plans to call for sharply narrowing the right to asylum at the United Nations later this month, documents show, as it seeks to undo the post-World War II framework around humanitarian protection.
State Department officials sketched out plans for an event later this month on the sidelines of the U.N.'s annual general assembly meeting that would call for reframing the global approach to asylum and immigration to reflect Trump's restrictive stance, according to two internal planning documents reviewed by reporters and a State Department spokesperson.
Under the proposed framework, asylum seekers would be required to claim protection in the first country they enter, not a nation of their choosing, the spokesperson said. Asylum would be temporary and the host country would decide whether conditions in their home country had improved enough to return, a major shift from how asylum works in the U.S. and elsewhere.
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