DHS Claims Migrants Are Using US Asylum System Like a 'Get-Out-of-Deportation-Free Card'

The Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) argued that migrants are exploiting the U.S. asylum system as a "get-out-of-deportation-free card."

"America's asylum system was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card," the department, led by Kristi Noem, declared in an X post shared Saturday.

The post included a photo of an CNBC headline that read: "U.S. Orders Trump administration to facilitate the return of Guatemalan deportee," referencing a gay Guatemalan man, referred to as "OCG" in legal filings, who applied for asylum last year after surviving two homophobic attacks in his home country.

"The person in question was an illegally present alien who was granted withholding of removal to Guatemala. He was instead removed to Mexico, a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim," the DHS claimed.

The man, however, stated he was raped and held for ransom after the Trump administration sent him on a bus to Mexico after a judge ruled he could not be sent to his home country. Two months ago, however, OCG was deported to Guatemala.

"Yet, this federal activist judge is ordering us to bring him back, so he can have an opportunity to prove why he should be granted asylum to a country that he has had no past connection to," the post continued. "The Trump administration is committed to returning our asylum system to its original intent."

The Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy wrote in a declaration to the court, shared Friday, that the Trump administration's deportation of the asylum-seeking man "lacked any semblance of due process."

"No one has ever suggested that OCG poses any sort of security threat," Murphy wrote. "In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped."

The U.S. asylum system was created to protect individuals like OCG who are fleeing persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. As part of its international and legal obligations under the 1967 Refugee Protocol and the Refugee Act of 1980, the U.S. has historically granted asylum to those who meet the refugee definition, either at the border or from within the country.

While not every seeker is granted asylum, alternative protections, like withholding of removal or relief under the Convention Against Torture, an international human rights treaty created by the United Nations in 1984, may apply when asylum is denied.

The Trump administration is pushing to deport OCG while granting refugee status to at least 49 white South Africans, primarily Afrikaners, during a refugee freeze for the rest of the world. Afrikaners have made widely discredited claims of being targeted by genocide, which the president and his administration have parroted.

Last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the White House to confront the president about his comments regarding the "genocide" against white people in his country.

"It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends like those who are here. When we have talks between us around a quiet table, it will take Trump to listen to them," President Ramaphosa said when a reporter asked what it would take for the U.S. president to believe a genocide was not happening.

"I'm not going to be repeating what I've been saying. I would say if there was an Afrikaner farmer genocide, I can bet you these three gentlemen would not be here," Rampahosa continued, gesturing to his top officials at his side, one of whom he said was his minister of agriculture.