Op-Ed: “Trump may be gone, but the U.S. asylum system is still broken”
October 6, 2021
Published by The Washington Post on August 12, 2021
By: Basileus Zeno, Karl Loewenstein fellow and visiting lecturer in political science at Amherst College.
Zeno recounts his experience of having to flee his country along with his wife Katty Alhayek, Assistant Teaching Professor at Georgetown University, during the outbreak of the Syrian War. They landed in the U.S. in 2012, and after a long wait in May 2021, their asylum request was denied, putting them vulnerable to deportation and in imminent danger due to their outspoken criticism of the Syrian government’s human rights violations. His piece touches on the disturbing legacy of the Trump-era asylum policy, which remains today despite the current Biden Administration’s promise to eradicate Trump immigration rules.