Eric Gay/AP Photo
Immigrants seeking asylum hold hands as they leave a cafeteria at the ICE South Texas Family Residential Center, August 23, 2019, in Dilley, Texas.
Twenty-eight migrant children from 23 separate families are set to be deported this weekend. The kids, ages 2 through 18, hail from Guatemala, Haiti, Chile, Honduras, El Salvador, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Peru. They came to the U.S. seeking refuge, but have been effectively barred by the Trump administration from making their case for asylum. Advocates say that they have been “arbitrarily placed” in expedited removal proceedings, instead of accessing the normal immigration and asylum processes.
The continued harsh deportation tactics show that Trump and his top immigration aides are committed to carrying out their aggressive agenda until their last day in power. Just a few weeks ago, the government deported dozens of Cameroonian asylum seekers after allegedly forcing them to sign their own deportation papers.
Three of the children spoke to journalists on a Zoom call Wednesday, making their case for federal intervention to stop their imminent deportation. The first migrant who spoke, a 15-year-old detained for more than 400 days, said that when she arrived, officers told her she had no right to asylum because she had not first applied in Mexico. “When Border Patrol detained us at the border, they said, ‘Throw away our garbage.’ That’s what they called our belongings, garbage,” she recalled through a translator. “They said we only have the right to go back to Mexico or to go back to our country.”
Despite not knowing the process for seeking asylum in the U.S., which includes a “credible fear” interview where an asylum seeker shows they fear death or persecution in their country of origin, the girl and her family underwent questioning by “unqualified CBP officers” in hostile circumstances within 48 hours of arriving, advocates said. They were also denied a right to counsel prior to their interview.
The children and their families have been detained for the entirety of the pandemic, despite legal appeals. All are held with their parents at the ICE Berks (Pennsylvania) and Dilley (Texas) family detention centers. If deported, many will return to areas hit hard by the coronavirus outbreak and by the devastation of severe back-to-back hurricanes.
“None of them have not met the standard for asylum,” explained Bridget Cambria, an attorney for Aldea—The People’s Justice Center. “They’ve never been allowed to meet the standard for asylum … They’ve been prevented from accessing it.” Cambria outlined how the children and their families were illegally subject to the asylum ban 2.0, as it’s sometimes called, which holds asylum seekers to a higher standard for obtaining refuge in the country. “All these policies are unlawful and they have been unlawful, but because these [migrants] are in expedited removal proceedings, there’s nothing we can do except call on the executive to act,” she said.
Because the 23 families traveled through Mexico, their asylum proceedings occurred under the “safe third country” transit ban, which bars asylum seekers from accessing the American asylum system unless they first seek asylum in Mexico. The rule disproportionately impacts Central American asylum seekers, as well as African asylum seekers who travel through Central America and Mexico to reach the U.S. southern border.
Caught up in the constant flux of litigation surrounding Trump administration asylum rules, these families lost access to the asylum process solely because of the discretion of the Department of Homeland Security, explained Shalyn Fluharty, an attorney for Proyecto Dilley. “It often feels like eeny meeny meiny moe, a NTA for you, an order of expedited removal for you, MPP for you, and T-42 for you,” wrote Fluharty in an email. “In other words, the fact that their families were initially placed in expedited removal rather than placed in 240 proceedings so they could see an immigration judge was completely arbitrary.” The transit ban mimics other safe third country agreements, such as the Trump administration’s agreement with Guatemala. Because of new pandemic restrictions which have effectively ended asylum at the border, just around a thousand people have been processed under the Guatemala agreement as of March.
Proyecto Dilley, a legal-services nonprofit, represents 26 of the 28 children who are facing removal. The group was joined by Aldea—The People’s Justice Center, another legal services organization, and the Haitian Bridge Alliance, a nonprofit community organization.
Yesterday’s ruling barring the administration from continuing to deport child asylum seekers at the border does not apply to these families, since they entered before the pandemic. The ruling instead bars the government from immediately turning away or deporting children who are arriving at the border during the pandemic. Since March, the government has turned away at least 13,000 unaccompanied children as part of harsh measures that have effectively ended asylum at the border.
The continued harsh deportation tactics show that Trump and his top immigration aides are committed to carrying out their aggressive agenda until their last day in power.
More than 60 advocacy groups have written a letter to Congress, President Trump, and President-elect Biden, demanding intervention on behalf of these 23 families and listing every discrete way that their rights were denied, from when they were interviewed by CBP agents without ability to consult with counsel, to their detention for more than a year.
“It would be fundamentally unfair to deport these children based upon rules and policies that have since been declared unlawful,” the letter reads. “For many of these children, deportation is a death sentence.” The letter calls for an immediate halt to ICE’s deportation efforts, for congressional legislation in the event of ICE’s noncompliance, and to “hold a public hearing” to investigate all of the Trump administration’s rules implemented to “eliminate access to asylum.”
Attached to the advocates’ letter is a parallel appeal from two teenage children detained in an ICE detention center for over a year. Their letter, translated from the original Spanish, details their painful experience in detention. “It is sad, painful, and humiliating to be treated like criminals when we are only seeking an opportunity at protection, safety, peace, and a better life,” they write.
On Wednesday's Zoom call, an 8-year-old boy described what it’s been like growing up in detention, where he has been held for more than 450 days. “The other kids and I, we have a right to be free,” he said through a translator. “The truth is, I don’t want to spend another Christmas in this detention center. I want to spend it outside with my family and my dad.”
