When it comes to immigration and public safety, Republican and Democratic platforms have become virtually indistinguishable. Both sides are espousing a narrative that calls for harsher policies, more enforcement, and increased incarceration. Candidates have bought into the idea that to win votes, they must lean into “toughness.”

So how did we get here? Extremist candidates currently control the narrative on both issues and are weaponizing Americans’ fears to win support. These extremist candidates paint a picture of communities under siege and insist the only way to keep families safe is by turning people away who seek safety at the border and putting more people behind bars. They label any candidate who disagrees with this approach as “soft,” “weak,” and “unfit” to address the issues facing our communities.

New ACLU polling shows, however, that despite all the fearmongering in American politics, voters want something completely different. Our survey showed that in battleground states, Congressional districts, and across the nation, when it comes to immigration and public safety voters want solutions that address the root causes of both issues – not calls for more punishment. Our research, coupled with recent surveys from other leading organizations, clearly shows taking a page out of the MAGA playbook is a liability – not a winning strategy.

Here’s what you need to know.

“Tough on crime” and “tough on immigration” policies don’t make us any safer, and instead, only exacerbate many of the underlying issues of both. For instance, inhumane policies that illegally limit who can ask for asylum force vulnerable people to wait in limbo in dangerous conditions for years, leading to further confusion and disorder at the border. Our nation’s overreliance on police and incarceration has disproportionately harmed Black and Brown people, those experiencing addiction and mental health issues, and people who are homeless. It has also perpetuated cycles of harm by saddling people with criminal records that only create additional barriers to success.

Voters understand that more of the same is not the answer, and that it’s past time to tackle the root causes of issues in both areas. Candidates would do well to listen to them, not just to capture votes, but because they’re sound policy solutions.

For more than 100 years, the ACLU has consistently fought for policies that advance justice and safeguard our rights. But this work isn’t easy. Even lawmakers who champion of LGBTQ+ rights, protect abortion access, and safeguard democracy can compromise their principles to support harmful immigration and criminal legal policy bills when they believe it’s the only way to win over voters. Here’s the good news: Our research shows that even though voters are concerned about public safety and immigration, they want real solutions that tackle the root causes of both. Conventional political wisdom that assumes when voters are afraid, candidates must lean into toughness, is wrong. Leading with humanity and justice is more than just the right thing to do – it’s politically advantageous.

Recent polling shows that immigration is a top concern for many voters. Yet more than 73 percent of Americans believe that we should not only provide access to the asylum system for people fleeing persecution and violence, but also a road to citizenship for long-term residents and Dreamers.

Rather than extreme partisan politics or cruelty, voters want candidates who champion real solutions. In surveying voters across six congressional battleground districts, 65 percent agreed that the country needs a balanced approach to immigration that both manages the border and provides a path to citizenship for long-term residents, over the idea that it’s either too dangerous or too costly to open up our country to immigrants. Sixty-eight percent of voters in seven key battleground states similarly favor a balanced approach.

Notably, our research shows that when candidates, regardless of party affiliation, adopt a balanced, solutions-focused approach, they outperform their opponents’ fear-based messages. In a national YouGov survey, voters presented with a Republican candidate using a “balanced approach” message against a Democratic candidate’s “tough-on-immigration” message, chose the Republican candidate by 16 points. Similarly, voters presented with a Democratic candidate using a “balanced approached” message against a Republican tough message, chose the balanced approach message by seven points, while the Democratic “tough-on-immigration” approach lost or tied.

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Although nationwide crime is at historic lows, voters across the political spectrum believe it’s going up — and not just in big cities, but in their own communities. Despite their concerns, voters overwhelmingly want prevention, not punishment. They believe investing in community-based services is the most effective way to foster safety. Nationally, improving access to mental health care as a public safety solution outperforms putting 100,000 more police on the streets by a staggering 26 points.

In some of the toughest Congressional districts across Arizona, California, New Jersey, and Ohio, 59 percent of voters don’t think we can arrest our way out of homelessness, unemployment, and poverty. Instead, they believe investing in services that will treat the root causes of these problems, like affordable housing and job training, is a more effective solution than relying on punishment and incarceration.

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Whether it’s a Republican or Democrat espousing a “tough on crime” narrative based on fear, they lose to the candidate offering a response focused on solutions. In two New York battleground congressional districts, both currently held by Republicans, we tested two different frames on crime and public safety against a “tough-on-crime” incumbent. The survey found that the challenger offering solutions like affordable housing, mental health, and addiction treatment performed five points better among all voters. Notably, this candidate won undecided voters by 19 points.

With sound proof that voters are eager for real solutions – like those that keep families together, ensure people have access to mental health and addiction treatment, and that invest in solving housing insecurity – there’s no excuse for candidates to fall back on fear.

Our research delivers a clear message for candidates: Voters are hungry for bold, new solutions, not the same old fear-driven tactics. The key to success in 2024’s electoral battlegrounds lies in presenting innovative, solution-focused approaches to immigration and public safety. This research should serve as a wake-up call for candidates who’ve fallen to the idea that to win their elections, they must lean into harsher rhetoric and policies. The opposite is true. Candidates should embrace the electorate’s desire for justice and humanity.

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump has promised to pursue even more extreme anti-immigrant policies if he wins a second term. These policies would disregard fundamental principles of democracy and the rule of law to devastate immigrant communities and erode freedoms for all Americans.

The ACLU is prepared to hold our executive branch to account. Just this week, we announced that we’ll challenge the Biden administration’s executive actions to illegally restrict people’s right to seek asylum – just as we previously challenged Trump’s actions. If Trump is reelected, we will continue to push to protect people and their rights against unlawful overreach. Learn more in our breakdown:

Trump On Immigration

The Facts: If reelected, Trump has promised to use totalitarian tactics to carry out the largest mass detention and deportation program in the nation’s history. Experience from smaller-scale detention sweeps shows that his proposed policies will lead to people being stopped, arrested, or detained simply because they “look foreign,” and his program will necessarily entail numerous other legal violations as well. Trump and his supporters also seek to dismantle our asylum system – creating more chaos at the border — and attack families by ending birthright citizenship and depriving undocumented children of their right to a public education. Trump has also vowed to reinstate family separation at the border – a cruel policy the ACLU blocked during his presidency.

Why It Matters: While many of the immigration policies we saw during Trump’s presidency were halted or delayed through litigation, the immigration policies we’ll likely see during a second Trump administration are far crueler, more extreme, and more fundamentally damaging to core rights and freedoms than any in living memory. If Trump is reelected, his plan to deport millions of people a year and severely restrict legal immigration will violate key legal protections – including our right to due process – and make xenophobia and racism the touchstones of American immigration policy. Simply put, these policies would harm all of us by tearing apart immigrant families, communities, and the fabric of American society.

How We Got Here: There’s no doubt that a second Trump administration will pick up and expand the anti-immigrant campaign it began in 2016. During his first term, the Trump administration instituted a Muslim ban, tried to deport Dreamers and others with temporary legal protection, separated families seeking asylum, and fought to build a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Our Roadmap: Through coordinated action at all levels and branches of government, we’re prepared to fight the Trump administration’s attack on immigrant rights. We’ll call on legislators to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from conducting mass deportations and pass measures to begin shrinking the ICE detention machine. We’ll also work with states and localities to build a civil rights firewall to protect residents to the full extent possible and ensure that a Trump administration can’t hijack state resources to carry out its draconian policies. And, if Trump sends a bill to Congress that effectively ends asylum, we’re prepared to mobilize our supporters nationwide to stop it because we know that a strong majority of voters support the U.S. asylum system.

In addition to working for policy change at every government level, we’re prepared to litigate cases to protect people’s rights under the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, as well as other legal provisions, against the mass deportation program. We’ll use the full power of the Fourteenth Amendment and Supreme Court precedent to protect birthright citizenship and ensure immigrant children have equal access to education. Lastly, should a second Trump administration try to bring back family separation at the border, we’ll take them to court for violating our settlement agreement.

What Our Experts Say: “These policies have no place in a democracy that protects or respects civil liberties and the rule of law. From the courts to the halls of Congress, we will use every tool at our disposal, including litigation, to defend the rights of immigrants and protect all members of our communities from the widespread damage these policies would cause.” – Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project

“Xenophobia and racism would become the touchstones of American immigration policy under a second Trump administration, if he is re-elected. That’s why we must begin mobilizing with local and state governments now to protect communities nationwide from extreme anti-immigrant policies.” – Naureen Shah, deputy director of government affairs at the ACLU

What You Can Do Today: ICE detention is known for abuse, pervasive medical neglect, and complete disregard for the dignity of people in its custody. Needlessly locking up people seeking a better life does nothing to make our communities safer. Take action now: Tell your congress member to support cuts for ICE detention capacity.

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pNyynkpao Banyee remembers vividly the first time he saw the United States. He was six years old, flying high above New York City. “If I close my eyes right now, I go back to seeing, just being above New York and seeing those lights for the first time. It was nighttime. And there was snow. I remember seeing that for the first time, just a little bit, but it was beautiful,” he recalled recently./p pMr. Banyee, his mother and younger brother came to the U.S. in 2004 as refugees fleeing the civil war in Côte D’Ivoire. His father died in Côte D’Ivoire shortly after the family arrived in the States. They resettled first in rural Pennsylvania, then moved to Philadelphia and later became lawful permanent residents. When he was about 17, the family moved to North Dakota, where he has been living for nearly a decade and now lives with his mother and his two younger half-siblings. His mother’s two sisters live nearby, as does his brother./p pAn inquisitive and observant child, Mr. Banyee was fascinated by drawing and comic books. Today, at 26, he is a restaurant-worker who aims to use that creativity to turn his interest in music into a career. He has ambitious plans for building up his own business. He supports his family, although he says his family is really his support system, especially his mother. “Me and my siblings talk about this among ourselves: we’ve never seen a woman or a person as strong as our mother,” he said./p pA dark shadow hangs over Mr. Banyee’s bright future. He’s facing the possible loss of his liberty – deportation to a country he has never been back to since he fled as a child refugee and permanent separation from his family and the only home he’s ever known./p div class=mb-8 wp-pullquote standard div class= wp-pullquote-inner p#8220;I Just Couldn’t Allow Myself to Be Defeated#8221;/p /div /div pIn 2017, when he was just 19, Mr. Banyee was arrested for robbery and later sentenced to four years in prison. He experienced a lot of fear upon being incarcerated but was inspired to turn over a new leaf. “A lot of different things kept me motivated, but I would say primarily, from the core, it was my family,” he said./p pWhile incarcerated, Mr. Banyee worked on himself and was motivated to learn as much as he could.He read an enormous selection of novels, finance books, magazines, and worked in the prison. His favorite job was working in the library. He voluntarily completed numerous programs in peer support, mental wellness, and practical skills like budgeting and CPR./p p“I just got into learning, learning, learning. I just couldn’t allow myself to be defeated [by the system].”/p pHe wrote letters to his family and sent them the poems he’d written. He wrote so much his family couldn’t keep up. Although his family wanted to visit him as much as possible, he wanted to spare them the burden of driving the long distance from their home to the prison, and the emotional toll of seeing him in prison. They still talked on the phone frequently./p pAfter spending years working on himself, Mr. Banyee’s release date was finally approaching: March 31, 2021. He was expecting to go home, but when March 31 came, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were waiting for him at the prison. They took him into custody, and he was transferred from North Dakota to a Minnesota jail./p p“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Banyee said. “I’ve been [in the U.S.] my entire life. I had no idea – no clue – what ICE was and what this department was capable of, or what in the world was going on.” He called his mother from the jail to tell her he was in detention again – not for a criminal reason, but because of immigration./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardThe Unjust System of Mandatory Immigration Detention /h2 /div pWhy was Mr. Banyee taken into immigration detention the moment he was released from prison?/p pIt was because of a law that Congress passed in 1996 that requires the mandatory detention of noncitizens facing possible deportation for criminal conduct. Under this law, ICE can detain noncitizens slated for deportation for a range of criminal convictions, including convictions for nonviolent, minor, or old offenses, and even if the noncitizens have already served their time and are a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preaplong rehabilitated./a While their deportation cases are pending – a process that can take years – noncitizens could sit behind bars indefinitely, without the right to a bond hearing, even if they pose no danger or flight risk./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank tabindex=-1 img width=700 height=350 src=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88.jpg class=attachment-4x3_full size-4x3_full alt= decoding=async loading=lazy srcset=https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88.jpg 700w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88-400x200.jpg 400w, https://www.aclu.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/ccd40eb636771df4582a1631f217cb88-600x300.jpg 600w sizes=(max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px / /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank Nielsen v. Preap /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tabletWhether the government can require that certain people are detained for the duration of their deportation proceedings — without a hearing —.../p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/nielsen-v-preap target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div pSince the mandatory detention law was enacted in 1996, the ACLU has taken the lead in a href=https://www.aclu.org/cases/jennings-v-rodriguezchallenging/a it in the courts. My Khanh Ngo, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project (IRP), said immigration detention is not supposed to be about punishment. The only legitimate government interests in immigration detention are if a person poses a flight risk or a danger to the public. But the mandatory detention statute allows the government to detain a person without showing why it’s necessary – violating a basic principle of due process. Ngo recently appeared as counsel for Mr. Banyee before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, where she a href=http://media-oa.ca8.uscourts.gov/OAaudio/2024/2/222252.MP3argued/a that the mandatory detention statute was unconstitutionally applied to him./p p“The problem with mandatory detention is that there is no individualized consideration,” Ngo said, “Our argument has always been the government needs to bear the burden of showing this person needs to be detained either by [showing they’re a] flight risk or danger.”/p pAfter nearly 13 months in detention, Mr. Banyee and his volunteer immigration counsel, the Advocates for Human Rights (AHR), won a habeas petition – a request to a court or judge to determine whether a person#8217;s detainment is legal or just – and was granted a bond hearing. An immigration judge released him on bond in April 2022. He had been incarcerated for over five years, four for the criminal conviction, and one for mandatory immigration detention./p pHis family and friends celebrated his release with a big feast. Every moment of freedom has been special. “I had five years taken away from a lot of our time together,” Mr. Banyee said of his family. “I’m trying to spend as much time with them.”/p pToday, the federal government is appealing Mr. Banyee’s habeas decision, arguing that it has a right to detain him with no limit, as long as his deportation case is proceeding. The ACLU has joined AHR to defend the habeas grant, supporting Mr. Banyee’s right to have a bond hearing and be free while he challenges his deportation case./p pMandatory detention significantly impacts a person’s ability to defend against deportation and win relief to which they might be entitled. Even though immigration detention is not supposed to be a punishment, people are often detained in criminal detention settings and subject to the same rules and limitations as people who are incarcerated./p pNgo explains there is no right to government-appointed immigration counsel, so a person in immigration detention is much less likely to be represented because they can’t work and are less likely to be able to afford a lawyer. People in immigration detention also have limited phone or email access and limited language services, preventing them from engaging with the outside world, including legal services. Often, they are isolated and unable to gather evidence to defend themselves./p pThe United States’ immigration detention system is the largest in the world, Ngo notes. “The conditions of immigration detention are so horrific,” she said. “No other country holds this many immigrants to try to deport them.”/p div class=wp-heading mb-8 h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-standardA Mistake Shouldn’t Mean Exile /h2 /div pLike many noncitizens, Mr. Banyee has deep roots in the U.S. and has already served his time for crimes he committed. Yet, he and many others are again deprived of their liberty through mandatory immigration detention, and face the possibility of deportation./p pSome, like Mr. Banyee, are arrested immediately after their term of incarceration ends. Others are arrested years after they complete any sentence for their convictions, even though they have reintegrated into their communities and have not had any legal troubles. For many, it feels like double punishment./p p“You shouldn’t be defined by one thing that took place in your history, and that shouldn’t consign you to a life of permanent banishment from the United States,” Ngo said./p pMr. Banyee has had significant success defending against deportation in his immigration court proceedings. An immigration judge and three members of the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) have determined that he deserves cancellation of removal, meaning that if he wins his case, he can keep his lawful permanent resident status and one day become a U.S. citizen. His immigration case is currently on appeal for the second time, before the BIA, where it can take years to resolve. At the same time, he is waiting for the Eight Circuit to decide if he can remain free on bond while he awaits a decision on the deportation case./p p“Everybody makes mistakes,” Mr. Banyee said. “In my case, [I] served time, [I] actually went through the process of giving back that adhered to the principles of the society.” He feels deportation would be an extreme consequence for people, like him, who arrived in the U.S. as children, whose lives are here, and who have already served their time for past mistakes./p pMr. Banyee wants to stay in the U.S., with his family, in the country he calls home. The U.S. is the country that has molded him, that has provided him security and allowed him to have ambitious dreams while supporting his family. “I’m willing to put in the work,” he said, “just to be allowed to live that dream.”/p

pEvery year, thousands of asylum seekers from diverse corners of the world seek refuge in the United States. Many — like Indigenous people from Latin America and Africa — are fleeing persecution based on the languages they speak and their cultural, ethnic, and racial backgrounds. Their ability to access the asylum system has life-or-death consequences. Yet our government cuts off access to asylum and other fundamental rights based on language barriers alone./p pThe federal government has a responsibility to ensure people with limited English proficiency (LEP) can reasonably access its services. Failure to do so discriminates by excluding LEP people from federal programs. This infringes on LEP individuals’ constitutional due process and equal protection rights, as well as well-established language rights enshrined in federal law. Nevertheless, the government routinely denies asylum seekers critical language access throughout the asylum process./p div class=mp-md wp-link div class=wp-link__img-wrapper a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank tabindex=-1 /a /div div class=wp-link__title a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank Petition for Rulemaking: Interpreters for Affirmative Asylum Interviews /a /div div class=wp-link__description a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7-mobile is-size-6-tablet/p /a /div div class=wp-link__source p-4 px-6-tablet a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviews target=_blank tabindex=-1 p class=is-size-7Source: American Civil Liberties Union/p /a /div /div div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markLanguage Barriers Cut Off Access to Asylum, Cause Prolonged Detention, and Lead to Wrongful Deportations/h2 /div pStarting even outside the United States, anyone seeking asylum at the border generally must use the CBPOne app to obtain an elusive appointment. Beyond well-documented problems with accessibility, appointment shortages, racist facial recognition bugs, and other technical issues, the app is only available in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole, with limited Russian and Portuguese features. Thousands of asylum seekers who speak other languages are a href=https://castro.house.gov/imo/media/doc/03212024lettertodhsenglish.pdfleft out/a, with dangerous a href=https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Asylum-Ban-Harms-Factsheet-formatted.pdfconsequences/a for those stranded in waiting./p pLanguage access problems continue once LEP individuals finally enter the United States for asylum screening. The government a href=https://www.uscis.gov/sites/default/files/document/memos/Language-Access-in-Credible-Fear-Screenings.pdfadmits/a that it struggles to provide interpreters for certain languages, especially rare or Indigenous languages, during screening interviews. As a result, asylum seekers often feel pressured to undergo interviews — which determine whether they can even pursue an asylum claim — in a more common language, even if they don’t speak it proficiently enough to communicate sensitive details of their claim./p pThose who finally get an opportunity to apply for asylum must complete their application — a complicated legal document — entirely in English. For LEP asylum seekers in government detention facilities without translation or interpretation services, that’s a href=https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BS-N6hRly4e4am4iGwoeUYw0CpJgJHrd/view?usp=sharingimpossible/a. Appallingly, immigration judges have a href=https://thegrio.com/2024/03/20/congress-asks-biden-harris-admin-to-address-discrimination-against-black-mauritanians-at-border/#:~:text=Politics-,Congress%20asks%20Biden%2DHarris%20admin%20to%20address%20discrimination%20against%20Black,practices%20that%ordered/a LEP asylum seekers to be returned to the countries they fled, simply because they could not fill out their asylum application in English, even when no language services were available. Moreover, immigration courts can’t find adequate interpreters for a href=https://clarke.house.gov/clarke-leads-letter-to-dhs-and-ice-urging-release-of-detained-mauritanian-asylum-seekers-and-justice-for-rare-language-speakers/certain languages/a, leading to unnecessary and prolonged detention. Often, people are faced with an impossible choice: proceed in languages they don’t fully understand (and risk being denied protection) or give up. Effectively, the government blocks LEP people from presenting their asylum claims merely because of the language they speak — not because they lack a meritorious claim./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markThe Government Already Has Interpreters Available. Yet It Still Requires Affirmative Asylum Seekers to Find Their Own./h2 /div pAffirmative asylum interviews are another glaring example of the government’s discrimination against LEP asylum seekers. Affirmative asylum interviews are a critical step in the asylum process — they are the only opportunity for someone to sit down with an asylum officer and explain their fear of persecution outside of the removal process. But for decades, the government has required LEP applicants to provide their own interpreters during these interviews. This puts a substantial logistical and financial burden on LEP asylum seekers, many of whom have limited financial means, and imposes an even greater burden on those who speak rare languages with only a handful of interpreters available across the country. LEP applicants who can’t find interpreters face delays or, worse, referral to removal proceedings./p pFinancial constraints force many applicants to use friends or family members to interpret. Serious ethical and practical concerns follow. Applicants may hesitate to share the full scope of their trauma or asylum claim with loved ones; untrained interpreters may lack an understanding of professional norms of confidentiality and conduct for interpretation or may struggle to accurately translate technical legal terminology. Inaccurate interpretation prevents applicants from fully presenting their claims, and can cause erroneous credibility findings./p pThe interpreter requirement is also inefficient and illogical. The government already contracts professional interpreters who monitor the quality of applicant-provided interpreters during interviews. That’s right: the government already pays for interpreters to participate in these interviews. It has a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/09/23/2020-21073/asylum-interview-interpreter-requirement-modification-due-to-covid-19stated/a on a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/03/16/2022-05636/asylum-interview-interpreter-requirement-modification-due-to-covid-19multiple/a a href=https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/03/17/2023-05572/asylum-interview-interpreter-requirement-modification-due-to-covid-19occasions/a that these contract monitors can provide more efficient interpretation at no additional cost. But asylum officers regularly reschedule interviews when applicants fail to bring an interpreter, even though the government’s interpreter is already present./p pDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, the government temporarily permitted applicants to use contract monitors as interpreters during asylum interviews. But the government recently and abruptly a href=https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/alerts/affirmative-asylum-applicants-must-provide-interpreters-starting-sept-13ended/a this policy without explanation, once again requiring applicants to bring their own interpreters. Now, more than ever, the government faces an unprecedented backlog of affirmative asylum cases with an outdated, inefficient, and discriminatory interpreter rule./p div class=wp-heading mb-8 hr class=mark / h2 id= class=wp-heading-h2 with-markThe Government Should Abandon Its Outdated and Discriminatory Rule/h2 /div pThe ACLU is fighting back. Along with 52 organizations from across the country, a href=https://www.aclu.org/documents/petition-for-rulemaking-interpreters-for-affirmative-asylum-interviewswe are petitioning/a the government to abandon its illogical and discriminatory rule requiring applicants to bring their own interpreters. Our ask is simple and common sense: change the regulation and permit asylum applicants to use the government-funded interpreters already present during asylum interviews at the applicant’s discretion. This will ensure that LEP asylum seekers have a meaningful opportunity to present their asylum claims and make one small but significant step toward bridging the gaps in language access in our asylum system./p