Trump admin plans push at UN to restrict global asylum rights

President Donald Trump's administration plans to call for sharply narrowing the right to asylum at the United Nations later this month, documents show, as it seeks to undo the post-World War Two framework around humanitarian protection.

State Department officials sketched out plans for an event later this month on the sidelines of the U.N.'s annual general assembly meeting that would call for reframing the global approach to asylum and immigration to reflect Trump's restrictive stance, according to two internal planning documents reviewed by Reuters and a State Department spokesperson.

Under the proposed framework, asylum seekers would be required to claim protection in the first country they enter, not a nation of their choosing, the spokesperson said. Asylum would be temporary and the host country would decide whether conditions in their home country had improved enough to return, a major shift from how asylum works in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Trump's administration has already rewritten the U.S. approach to immigration, prioritizing white South Africans for entry and forcefully detaining those in the country illegally. With the U.N. event, Trump would be taking that restrictive vision global, urging its adoption by the world body that established the international legal framework for the right to seek asylum.

One of the documents describes migration as "a defining challenge for the world in the 21st century" and says asylum "is routinely abused to enable economic migration." It calls for reforming the global approach to migration worldwide and greatly limiting the ability of people to seek asylum.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau would lead the side event at the U.N., according to the planning document.

The U.S. could not unilaterally scrap the global refugee pacts, however, and while some like-minded governments may support the effort, there have been no signs of broad support for a worldwide realignment.

At a meeting of the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration on Tuesday, top Trump refugee official Spencer Chretien said the Trump administration would seek to replace the decades-old global accords and "build a new framework," according to meeting notes shared with Reuters.