The Reality of Current US Immigration Policy 47 administration is proposing to completely block land entry via the southern border to all asylum seekers. If implemented, this would mean that only refugees rich enough to fly or organize visas for themselves would have the possibility of getting to the United States to seek asylum. In a macabre, Monty Pythonesque twist, the job of providing sanctuary to humanitarian migrants fleeing violence would then be left to the murder capitals of the world – Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras – all of whom have signed cooperative agreements to this effect with the United States. In addition, new proposals advanced by the Trump administration would gut the asylum process even further, compounding the impact of safe third country exclusion procedures with draconian restrictions to the substantive grounds required as proof of eligibility for refugee status.47 No European country, many of them addressing immigration pressures proportionately greater than the United States, has intentionally incarcerated migrant children or denied access to the asylum procedure to irregular entrants. Why? Not because they have unlimited reception capacity, not because they lack a deeply xenophobic element in their electorates, not because arguments about deterrence and moral blackmail as pragmatic migration control tools do not circulate. Countries do not incarcerate migrant children or eliminate the possibility of asylum for irregular entrants as a matter of fundamental moral and legal principle. These policies and proposals highlight the growing outlier, even rogue status of the United States in the international sphere. American exceptionalism has long been acknowledged in relation to gun ownership, capital punishment, mass incarceration, and – in recent history – unapologetic use of torture. But this country’s long history of celebrating its immigrant identity was a welcome aspect of US exceptionalism. Trump’s infliction of harm on current populations of distress migrants eviscerates the best aspects of the American polity itself. Rights-Respecting and Feasible Alternatives It is worth considering the alternatives to these inhumane policies. International law, US constitutional obligations, and common humanity demand a radically different approach to children fleeing life-threatening violence. The fact that these children are non-citizens has no relevance to their claim for enforcement of rights – legal rights, human rights, fundamental rights. Outrage at the family separation policy demonstrated that, across the political spectrum, the claim that the well-being of vulnerable children can legitimately be used as a deterrent to border crossing is untenable. Widespread global political consensus and international norms establish the opposition to child migrant detention and to punitive action against children 47 Z. Kanno-Youngs, “Asylum Officers Condemn What They Call ‘Draconian’ Plans by Trump,” New York Times, July 15, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/us/politics/asylum-officers-trump .html. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press