How The U.S. Asylum System Works

President Trump’s zero-tolerance immigration policy has put a spotlight on the U.S. asylum process. According to an analysis of government statistics by the American Immigration Council, an immigrant advocacy group, around 20,000 people were granted asylum in 2016, the latest data available. That’s down from nearly double that in the early 2000s, but up significantly from the ’90s.

So what causes those changes, and how does the asylum process work?

‘s Meghna Chakrabarti speaks, director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Houston Law Center, who has also represented asylum seekers in the U.S.