This is the Cato Daily podcast for Thursday, March 13th, 2025.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It bears repeating Trump administration's immigration policies for those seeking asylum from persecution are much worse than those policies have been in the past.

For Christians seeking to escape persecution,

the story is the same. Cato's David Beer comments.

The Trump administration talks about immigration in terms of criminals. But if you look at the policies

in the first term and in this new term, it is a broad-based,

just making legal immigration more difficult across the board.

The targeting does not appear to be focused on people who have committed crimes or are otherwise

dangerous. Can you explode the myth that this administration is at all concerned about targeting

criminals? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you look at the stages to the immigration policy, the very first

actions that he took were to shut down the refugee program, which vets people to come into the

United States from abroad, and at the same time shut down the alternative option, which is to come to the border and request asylum

there, including for people who are coming through the legal ports of entry, applying to

come in the right way, the Obama, sorry, the Biden administration had set up an app that under which they could apply.

They submit their information in advance.

This was a huge improvement to the process at the border.

They don't have to cross illegally.

They didn't have to, you know, have all the chaos there.

So he shut that down.

He shut down the refugee program abroad.

And so there wasn't really another legal option available to them.

...