“What will change in 2020 on the issue of asylum?”
MPI: The courts will undoubtedly weight in this year on several Trump initiatives to restrict access to asylum at the border. Currently, anyone who crossed through Mexico to get to the US border (that is, everyone except Mexican nationals) is prohibited from seeking asylum in the United States (though a court has stayed this for California and Arizona); some asylum seekers who reach the border are being sent to Guatemala to go through asylum hearings in that country instead; while others who are hoping to enter the United States are sent to wait for a hearing in Mexico.
All of these measures are now in litigation and courts will be ruling on them, deciding whether they are legally defensible or an overreach of executive branch rule-making. And there may be several rounds in different courts on each of these measures, as they go through the appeals process, creating confusion for some time about who can apply for asylum, how, and where. At some point (but perhaps not until 2021) the Supreme Court may finally step in and rule on each of these measures, but until then, we are likely to see a patchwork of changing rules around asylum at the border.