U.S. Immigration Authorities Speed ​​Up Asylum Decisions

US immigration authorities in Texas plan to expedite asylum decisions.

Фото: Depositphotos

“U.S. immigration officials are testing a fast-track asylum program at a Border Patrol station in Texas to show how the Trump administration could enforce a partial asylum ban,” writes Time.

The pilot project, called the Rapid Asylum Processing System, began Oct. 7 in El Paso. Its goal is for an immigration judge to make decisions within 10 days. A senior official at the US Department of Homeland Security spoke about this on condition of anonymity.

This information was not announced publicly, which led to complaints by lawyers that they did not have access to clients and remained in the dark.

“We have not received any official communication from the Border Patrol, and it seems appropriate that they not tell (nongovernmental organizations) what is happening,” said Linda Rivas, executive director of the Las Americas Advocacy Center.

Taylor Levy, an immigration lawyer in El Paso, said lawyers cannot enter border patrol detention centers that are designed to hold people up to 72 hours. She learned about the pilot project from a lawyer who was unable to contact her two clients, women from El Salvador, with babies who crossed the border of 8 on October.

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An immigration judge dismissed their phone appeals, which meant he could not see the documents, including evidence of the deadly threats they faced in El Salvador. One woman was deported, while another is waiting to be sent home.

The pilot project is designed to provide asylum seekers with 24 hours of access to a telephone in a separate room before they are initially checked for compliance with the rules, but lawyers said the rules are unclear and that they have not received notice or instructions. If asylum seekers do not pass the test, they can contact the judges in Otero, New Mexico by telephone.

If these efforts are widely implemented, they could prove to be an important tool in the administration’s actions to ensure that the asylum ban is applied to all who cross another country before they reach the US border with Mexico. The partial asylum ban that came into effect last month focuses mainly on immigrants from Central America, Cubans and Africans, who have made the United States the most popular destination in the world for asylum seekers. Mexicans and unaccompanied children are exempted from the ban.

The administration has entered into agreements to send prohibition seekers to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to review their cases. However, officials acknowledge that these countries lack adequate infrastructure.

The asylum seekers, whose lawyers have confirmed their participation in the trials, are being held at a Border Patrol station that this year has transformed from a small office building into a sprawling maze of tent camps and new construction. This comes amid a rise in the number of asylum seekers, many of them families from Central America.

The station can accept up to 500 migrants, spokesman for border patrol Ramiro Cordero said. On Monday, a CBP spokesperson said that since detainees contacted by phone, they could be at any border patrol point in the El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico and West Texas.

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The Department of Homeland Security confirmed the existence of the pilot program on Thursday, a few hours after the Washington Post reported it, but provided few details. He described the program as a collaborative effort with the Department of Justice, which runs immigration courts, to expedite the proceedings. The statement said the innovation will apply to single men and people traveling with families who are subject to a ban on asylum.

El Paso is also testing the ground for the widespread practice of the separation of families at the border as part of a “zero tolerance” policy that criminalizes all adults illegally crossing the border, including those who come with their children.

Authorities did not make public statements about the El Paso family separation experiment. Taylor Levy said in court last year that she noticed a “significant increase” in the number of clients who were separated from their children at that time. More than 5400 children have been separated from their families since July 2017, according to data provided by the American Civil Liberties Union to state lawyers.

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