Trump builds a bureaucratic wall to keep out migrants

AT A MIGRANT shelter in Nuevo Laredo, a city in the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, the mood is cheerful. Children play among cinderblocks and piles of sand. Volunteers fry eggs in the kitchen. Residents tell their stories. “The salaries! It’s seven dollars a week in Cuba,” says Eldis, an engineer who left the island in May. A woman, her arms draped around her two daughters, one-ups him. “In Venezuela, it’s six dollars a month,” she replies. They are smiling because these hardships seem to lie behind them. But the mood darkens when the conversation turns to news from the United States, where they are heading.

On July 15th the Trump administration promulgated a rule that upends the United States’ system of dealing with asylum-seekers and could dash the hopes of those in Nuevo Laredo and thousands more. Under the new rules, no migrant can apply for asylum unless he or she has sought it in “at least one” other country along the way and been refused.