After a depressing few days researching America’s immigration detention system and sharing excerpts from representative articles, I was hoping to pivot today.
I was hoping to explain that, although most people arrested for the unthinkable crime of wanting to live a safe, productive life within the U.S. are imprisoned—briefly, indefinitely, or for a specific sentence length depending on the conditions of their arrest—in cold, hard, dehumanizing, potentially negligent, and potentially abusive conditions… there is, at least, one path to release that’s available to some people.
Namely, those who cross our border with the legal understanding and language abilities to explicitly request asylum at the time of their arrest should have their paperwork processed somewhat promptly. Then, after they’ve spent just a few days or maybe a week in detention, Immigration and Customs Enforcement releases them with instructions to travel to a sponsor’s residence (generally family members who already live in the U.S.). They’re required to report to their assigned court date for their asylum hearing, which could be months into the future given the current backlog. In the interim, although they’re not permitted to work and therefore must live in a state of unemployment and dependence on their sponsors, they are at least free—free to travel within the country, free to walk outside and take their kids to the park, free to shop for groceries and cook for themselves. Free to feel somewhat human, while they wait to see whether their asylum case will be accepted. Whether they’ll be permitted to stay or deported back to their country of origin.
I was going to try to find some glimmer of hope in that process.
But then, while listening to the news over my morning coffee, I heard this report.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
NPR Up First
April 17, 20196:14 AM ET
https://www.npr.org/2019/04/17/714223532/wednesday-april-17-2019
[5:09]
Steve Inskeep: President Trump’s administration is working again to make sure that people who seek shelter in the United States will feel pain.
David Greene: Let’s remember, in 2018 the administration separated parents and children at the southern border. Officials openly described that move as a deterrent to stop people from coming. The administration abandoned that policy under pressure. Well, now Attorney General William Barr has made another move. It is aimed at people who come to the U.S. seeking legal asylum. Barr’s order says they should be held indefinitely, without bond, as they await a hearing on their asylum claims. President Trump has complained about what he refers to as “catch and release,” policies allowing people to go free as they await a hearing.
Inskeep: NPR’s Joel Rose covers immigration and is on the line. Joel, good morning.
Joel Rose: Hi, Steve.
Inskeep: How significant a change is this?
Rose: Well, until now migrants who’ve crossed the border illegally can ask for asylum. If they pass the first hurdle by showing what’s called a credible fear of persecution or torture back home, then they can ask an immigration judge to release them on bond, and if the judge decides that there’s no reason to hold them, the migrants can be released until their full hearing in immigration court. That’s been the process in place for more than a decade, but Barr’s decision overturns that precedent.
Inskeep: I’m a little confused here because, as I understand it, William Barr is telling immigration judges how to decide a request for bond. Normally the Attorney General would be separate from a judge. Why is that Barr’s decision to make?
Rose: Right. Immigration courts are not like criminal courts. They’re part of the Department of Justice, so yes, the Attorney General can set the precedent and an immigration judge has to follow it. And yet, this decision by Barr is certain to be challenged in court. Michael Tan is with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project.
Michael Tan: You can’t lock people up without giving them the basic hearing before a judge, where that judge can look at the person and determine if they need to be locked up in the first place.
Rose: So the ACLU and other immigrants’ rights groups say they will challenge this decision in federal court. They’re already fighting the administration in another case about bond hearings for asylum seekers in Washington State, so that is where their challenge is likely to play out.
Inskeep: How does this decision fit into the administration’s broader effort to stop people from coming?
Rose: It seems like William Barr is following the path laid out by his predecessor, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who tried to limit access to asylum for victims of domestic violence and gangs. The immigration system is straining because thousands of Central American migrants are showing up at the border every day. Many of them are claiming asylum, and the Trump administration argues that a lot of those claims are fake and it wants to deter these people from coming to the U.S. and asking for asylum.
Inskeep: Any early indications as to whether people will be deterred?
Rose: The administration’s critics would say that it’s not, that this is going to beep bona fide asylum seekers in detention needlessly, and that more asylum seekers will keep coming anyway because the situations that they’re fleeing in Central America are so desperate. We should also note, Steve, that Attorney General Barr stayed his decision for ninety days in order to give Homeland Security time to prepare for possibly detaining all of these additional migrants who are impacted by his decision. At this point immigration authorities probably do not have enough detention beds for all those people who are affected.