From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today, the Trump administration says that domestic abuse is no longer a basis for granting asylum in the United States.

What that policy looks like to one victim.

It's Thursday, June 14th.

The United States of America is not some idea. It's not just a landmass or an economy.

Hours is a sovereign nation, nation-state with a constitution, laws, elections, borders.

And as you all well know, one of our major difficulties today is the asylum process.

The asylum system is being abused to the detriment of the rule of law, sound public policy, public safety even,

and to the detriment of people with just claims to asylum.

On Monday, attorney general Jeff Sessions went before a group of federal immigration judges to address a decision made under President Obama.

Powerful incentives were created for aliens to come here illegally and claim fear of return.

In effect, words spread that by asserting this fear, they could remain in the United States one way or the other and far too often that rumor proved correct.

In 2014, a ruling based on Obama's more progressive immigration policies allowed asylum seekers to cite the threat of domestic violence as the basis for asylum.

If they were coming from countries where their governments would not protect them.

The results are just what one would expect. The number of illegal entrants has surged, credible fear claims have skyrocketed,

and the percentage of asylum claims found to be meritorious by our judges has declined significantly.

On Monday, Sessions said he would end that approach.

Now we all know that many of those crossing the border illegally are leaving difficult even dangerous conditions,

and we understand that all our due proper respect in court and the proper legal process.

But we cannot abandon legal discipline and sound legal concepts.

So just sit naturally like you're going to sit during the interview and I'm going to move this towards you and then just you'll let me know how things sound.

Can you talk about that? Yeah, tell us what you have to breath.

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