This week, the Biden administration issued a proclamation and federal regulations to cement and expand asylum-restriction rules issued this summer. The rules broadly stop asylum claims altogether once attempts to cross the border reach the level of 2,500 per day, now staying in place until these encounters have dropped below 1,500 for a whole month. A White House fact sheet notes that the original rule “significantly increased the government’s ability to deliver timely consequences for those who cross unlawfully or arrive without authorization,” which might sound reasonable on first impression. Yet it does not note or engage with the fact that U.S. asylum law explicitly lays out that the ability to seek humanitarian protections is not limited by unlawful entry or lack of authorization. This is so because the entire concept of asylum at least partially relies on the idea that people might not have the ability to seek authorization before they arrive. That’s what makes asylum substantively different from the refugee program, and why it exists as a policy in its own right; determination of eligibility happens in the United States because some people might need to simply get to safety in the first place. Only a tiny minority of asylum cases originate with people already legally in the country because most people who already have access to authorization in the first place don’t need asylum. Immigration opponents will often retort that none of this matters because the people arriving now are not really seeking asylum, but merely gaming the system to arrive and squeeze out a few years of work authorization and semi-legal presence before either remaining as undocumented immigrants or returning to countries of origin. The statistics do show that a good chunk of cases are ultimately denied, though certainly fewer than the close-the-door-crowd would have you believe. As per data compiled by the TRAC project at Syracuse University, over the 2024 fiscal year until August, asylum judges around the country granted 46% of asylum cases they ruled on. The trouble is, there’s no way to parse this without having people actually go through the process. Even assuming that every denial was reasonably decided — and the Trump administration had already tightened eligibility criteria in the administrative immigration courts — that’s half of applicants that the government has determined had legitimate claims. Under a scheme where they’re turned away before they can ever even apply, we’re necessarily turning a lot of eligible people away, often back to real danger. Anti-immigration types want the law to mean whatever they want it to be. Vice presidential candidate JD Vance has openly admitted that he doesn’t really care that the Haitian immigrants that he has made it his mission to endanger with racist lies have legal status; he will deride them as “illegal” anyway, contending — including again in this week’s vice presidential debate — that the Biden administration’s use of programs that Congress has approved are illegitimate. Democrats don’t have to take the bait. No one wants chaos, but in some ways the rush to keep restricting in haphazard ways causes more chaos. Orderly management of arrivals and sufficient support to tide them through the processes to which they’re legally entitled would go a long way further.