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The Trump administration’s unabated assault on asylum is affecting Uighurs fleeing China.
In July, Mahire Alim’s four year-old son had a toothache, and it wouldn’t go away. Alim and her husband Adli Bekri* are Uighur asylum seekers who arrived in the U.S. in late February, fleeing both ethnic persecution and an encroaching pandemic. But they can’t afford the medical care—at least $3,500—for their son’s urgent dental treatment. They can’t afford it because they can’t work legally in the U.S.
The couples’ asylum applications have been pending with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) since April 20, but according to two new asylum rules proposed by the Trump administration that will take effect August 25, they won’t be eligible to apply for work permits this month. The first rule, experts have said, would fundamentally devastate the asylum system, drastically changing the very definition of persecution under the law. Under the second rule, an asylum seeker has to wait 365 days from the day they file their asylum application to apply for a work permit, up from 150 days. The rule also stipulates that, after they file their applications, the government no longer would have to process their application within 30 days; in theory, they could let the application linger indefinitely.
Notably, asylum seekers who cross the border illegally—not at a port of entry—are ineligible for work permits, “unless and until an immigration judge finds that they qualify for an exception.” But the system set up by the administration also consigns asylum seekers who used all legal means to seek refuge to endless uncertainty and anxiety.
Last month, several immigrant advocacy organizations filed suit, alleging that the new rules violate the Administrative Procedures Act by using a “piecemeal approach.”
“I think they want to hurt as many people as they can,” said Nick Katz, legal services senior manager at CASA, one of the organizations that filed the case. “It’s very transparent what they’re trying to do, and they may have tried to dot the Is and cross the Ts and go through process, but I think we very clearly laid out the case.”
Trump is more desperate to apply every anti-immigrant administrative tool at his disposal.
In the meantime, Alim and Bekri have taken out loans and are relying on the generosity of the local Uighurs in Virginia. “We are borrowing money from our Uighur community for daily necessities—simply to have something to eat and a shelter for us,” said Bekri.
The asylum rules, experts have said, fit into the Trump administration’s unabated assault on the practice, which has accelerated as Election Day approaches, with Trump more desperate to apply every anti-immigrant administrative tool at his disposal.
Katz said he thinks that administration has “basically ended legal immigration to the U.S.” during the pandemic, with asylum the final casualty. The U.S. does not have a system that reflects the realities of global migration, he said. “The focus on asylum seekers is really because that’s the group that has the most protections under the law,” he said, “and [Trump] wants to shut down that pathway too.”
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CHINA’S UIGHURS, A MOSTLY MUSLIM, TURKIC-SPEAKING ETHNIC MINORITY located in Xinjiang province, have faced relentless government persecution. An estimated one to three million Uighurs currently are detained in concentration camps, where their labor has been used to produce masks and even in the supply chains of Nike, Adidas, and Apple.
The backlog of asylum cases has caught Uighur asylum seekers more generally in the purgatory of American immigration, reported The Wall Street Journal last week. But the backlog has less to do with the pandemic, at least not yet, and a lot more to do with Trump administration policies that delay adjudication.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo
Rushan Abbas, a Uighur in Washington, D.C., holds a photo of her detained sister, Gulshan Abbas, December 2018.
A law signed by President Trump in June imposes sanctions on foreign individuals and entities involved in the Xinjiang abuses. But it does nothing to speed up the process for Uighurs seeking asylum in America.
According to Daniel Baker, Alim and Bekri’s immigration attorney, Uighurs almost always win their cases, citing the obvious conditions in Xinjiang. Half of Baker’s asylum clients are Uighurs, though his client list has shrunk over the past few years, he told me, because it’s harder for Uighurs to leave China. Alim and Bekri were already abroad, and fearful of returning to China at all. “I do kind of argue,” he said, “that being a Uighur in China by itself is enough to give you a reasonable fear of persecution.”
Baker pointed out that the stated rationale for the administration’s new asylum rule is to deter “frivolous” asylum claims that the government asserts someone might file solely in order to get a work permit. But, “the Trump administration has been, without admitting it, actively seeking to drive as many immigrants as possible into the underground economy,” he said.
Under current practice, if an asylum seeker is lucky enough to get a USCIS interview quickly—say, within five months of applying—and the USCIS officer finds the case “well founded,” the officer will issue a “recommended approval,” allowing an asylum seeker to apply for a work permit immediately, avoiding the required 150 days under current law. But under the new rule, an asylum seeker would still have to wait a full year to apply for a work permit.
“The new rule says even if the USCIS agrees that your case is not frivolous and that your case is well-founded, you still have to wait a year for your work permit,” said Baker. “So if there were any proof that the supposed justification for this is to deter frivolous asylum claims, that explodes it. The sole purpose here is to prevent legitimate asylum claimants from working.”
ALIM AND HER HUSBAND have both spent the better part of the last decade in a country in central Europe. (They asked to avoid specificity to protect their family in China.) Both secured education abroad. Alim studied first for her master’s degree in finance and then a PhD. Bekri finished his master’s degree and began working while Alim finished her studies.
Alim told the Prospect in an email that she hasn’t seen her family in five years. “My mother,” she wrote, “was detained in a concentration camp on September 23, 2017, for no reason except being Uighur.” After hearing this news, Alim struggled in her studies and developed a thyroid disorder. “I wanted to commit suicide many times, but whenever I saw my son, I told myself that I must be strong,” she wrote. By October 2019, despite completing the required coursework, she gave up her doctoral studies.
Bekri said in an interview that Alim’s mother was one of the “lucky ones,” because she was able to return home from the camps. Relatives sent the couple a photo. “She was so skinny, and all her hair was grey, and it was like she was 80 years old,” Bekri said.
Another Uighur asylum seeker who spent time in that same central European country and spoke with the Prospect, Alim Tursun*, explained that there are so few Uighurs there that they all knew each other. Chinese police operate in at least one city in the country, and they have retaliated against the families of Uighurs living there. Two of his cousins have already disappeared.
Ng Han Guan/AP Photo
Across the Xinjiang region, an estimated one to three million Uighurs currently live in concentration camps.
“Just being abroad is a very good reason to be put in these kinds of camps.”
According to Baker, Chinese police have extradited some Uighurs from Turkey, but not from the European country where his clients were located. (Extradition agreements allow fugitives in another country to be arrested and removed by the government of their country of origin. In this case, it allows China to arrest Uighurs in Turkey.)
“Just being abroad is a very good reason to be put in these kinds of camps,” said Bekri in an interview with the Prospect. Their son was born Europe in 2016, a year after the last time they visited family in China. He’s never met his grandparents, and it’s unclear when he will ever meet them.
TURSUN ARRIVED IN THE U.S. last December, and almost immediately decided to apply for asylum. But like the other Uighur couple who spoke with the Prospect, the timing of his application means that he, too, will be subject to the new work-permit rules.
A computer science engineer, he pays $850 a month for rent, and anticipated that his savings would last him until August when, under the old rules, he would be able to apply for his work permit and land a job by October. “I’m an engineer but I can’t work,” he said, noting his experience and the development of more than 10 applications to his name. “I just don’t know what to do.”
None of the Uighurs who spoke to the Prospect has told their relatives that they are in the U.S. In fact, Tursun said that he has kept his VPN and phone number from his time in Europe to maintain the illusion that he’s still there. He doesn’t plan to tell them for another two or three years. He has not returned to Xinjiang since 2016, when he was detained during a visit home at customs— “just because I’m a Uighur,” he said. The detention lasted several hours, with at least four different police officers asking him the same questions repeatedly.
Back in Europe, the surveillance was intense. While working on his master’s thesis, he traveled to another country in Europe to work for several months. There, he withdrew money from a bank to pay rent, buy food, and other essentials. Two weeks later, his sister in China called to ask why he had withdrawn money in another country. The police had called asking about him, she said to him. Don’t go anywhere else, she added.
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A year after his visit home, he completed his master’s degree in computer science and obtained an internship. The company eventually sponsored him for a work permit in 2018. When he went to the office that processed immigration documents for his work permit, the woman at the desk, he said, looked Chinese. When he handed her his passport, she began questioning him in Chinese. Two days later, the police called his parents in China, asking questions about his job and salary in Europe. Then, a Chinese police officer added him on WeChat—the Chinese messaging app monitored by the government—and began questioning him there, too.
Since 2016, Tursun told me, the police called his family every three or four months to ask about him and what he was doing. “Then in 2017, we started hearing about the concentration camps,” he said. A Uighur friend of his in Europe—a graphic designer—visited family in 2017, and when he returned he told Tursun never to go back to the region. “If you got there you will disappear,” the friend told him.
Six months before renewing his work permit, Tursun’s company told him they were downsizing and eliminating his position. He eventually applied for and received Canadian and American tourist visas. Baker, his lawyer, told me that many Uighurs travel to the United States on tourist visas before applying for asylum.
WHILE IN EUROPE, Alim and Bekri saved money, in anticipation of a wait for their asylum case in the U.S. When the pandemic took hold in Europe, they worried for their son and made the trip. “My husband and I only prepared for the worst-case scenario of six months with the only basic necessities (something to have to eat and a shelter to stay),” she wrote. When they arrived in February, they immediately signed a contract with their attorney and filed for asylum with USCIS. Their application has been pending since April 20.
On August 25, when the rules are set to take effect, the couple will have accumulated 127 days, but under the new rules they will have to wait another 238 days before applying for the permit. In an email, Alim urged me to “highlight how brutal and inhuman the final rule is … the new rule equals throwing asylum seekers on the street.”
Since arriving in Virginia via New York, they have been staying with friends. Bekri said he read all 97 pages of the final rule, and was devastated to learn that it would apply to them. The couple said they are afraid to work under the table, although their lawyer, Baker, told me that that an asylum seeker working illegally would have no impact on their asylum application. “Many of my clients will have no other choice,” he added. Others dispute that it would not have an effect.
So they wait. Five days a week, Bekri runs six miles at 5:30 each morning. Any later, he worries, there will be too many people out and he will “catch the virus.” In Europe, he ran a marathon. In Virginia, the couple plays with their 4-year-old son, reading him books and teaching him languages. Their family still has no idea they’re here, and they still can’t afford their son’s medical care.
*Names have been changed to protect asylum seekers’ families in China.
