CBP agents changed asylum paperwork
SAN DIEGO — Asylumseekers who have finished their court cases are being sent back to Mexico with documents that contain fraudulent future court dates, keeping some migrants south of the border indefinitely, records show.
Under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, asylum-seekers with cases in the United States have to wait in Mexico until those cases are resolved. The Mexican government agreed to only accept migrants with future court dates scheduled.
Normally, when migrants conclude their immigration court cases, they are either paroled into the United States or kept in federal custody depending on the outcome of the case.
However, records obtained by the San Diego Union-Tribune show that on at least 14 occasions, Customs and Border Protection agents in California and Texas gave migrants who had already concluded their court cases documents with fraudulent future court dates written on them and sent the migrants back to Mexico anyway.
Those documents, unofficially known as tear sheets, are given to every migrant in the Migrant Protection Protocols program who is sent back to Mexico. The document tells the migrants where and when to appear at the border so that they can be transported to immigration court. What is different about the tear sheets that migrants with closed cases receive, is that the future court date is not legitimate, according to multiple immigration lawyers whose clients have received these documents.
This has happened both to migrants who have been granted asylum and to those who had their cases terminated — meaning a judge closed the case without making a formal decision, usually on procedural grounds. Additionally, at least one migrant was physically assaulted after being sent back to Mexico this way, according to her lawyer.
Bashir Ghazialam, a San Diego-based immigration lawyer who represents six people who received these fake future court dates, said he was shocked by the developments.
“This is fraud,” he said. “I don’t call everything fraud. This is the first time I’ve used the words ‘U.S. government’ and ‘fraud’ in the same sentence. No one should be OK with this.”
The Department of Homeland Security and Custom and Border Protection did not respond to multiple requests to comment.
Ghazialam first noticed this in September, when three of his clients were sent back to Mexico after their cases were terminated on Sept. 17. After the judge made his decision, the family spent 10 days in CBP custody.
On Sept. 27, the family was given a document that read, in part, “At your last court appearance, an immigration judge ordered you to return to court for another hearing.” That piece of paper told them to return to court on Nov. 28.
However the immigration judge ordered no further hearing. Ghazialam’s clients do not have a hearing scheduled on that day or any other day.
To confirm Ghazialam’s claims, a reporter called a Department of Justice hotline that people with immigration court cases use to check their status and dates of future hearings. That hotline confirmed that the family’s case had been terminated on Sept. 17, and that “the system does not contain any information regarding a future hearing date on your case.”
“That date is completely made up and the Mexican authorities are not trained enough to know this is a fake court date,” Ghazialam said.
After being returned to Mexico, the mother was stabbed in the forearm while protecting her children from an attempted kidnapping. She still has stitches from the knife wound, Ghazialam said.
In one case, a Cuban asylum-seeker was returned to Mexico after an immigration judge in Brownsville granted her asylum.
The woman’s lawyer, Jodi Goodwin, remembers hugging her client after the decision and arranging a place to meet after authorities released her later that day after processing.
Goodwin expected the process to take 45 minutes so she went to a nearby
Whataburger and ordered a chocolate milkshake. About 40 minutes later, she got a phone call from her client.
“She was hysterical and crying,” Goodwin said. “I’m like, ‘what happened?’ and she says, ‘I’m in Mexico.’ ”
Goodwin called CBP and Mexican immigration authorities to try to find out what happened. She spent five hours at the border until 9 p.m. and then went back home to draft a lawsuit. It wasn’t until she threatened to sue CBP that her client was paroled into the United States.
“It was total chaos for 24 hours to try to figure it out,” Goodwin said. “It shouldn’t be like that, especially when CBP is blatantly lying. They are creating documents that have false information.”
Mexico’s Institute for National Migration did not immediately respond to questions about this practice.
It’s unclear how widespread this practice is. Lawyers in San Diego, Laredo and Brownsville confirmed they have seen it firsthand.
However, only about 1 percent of asylum-seekers in the Migrant Protection Protocols program have lawyers. Therefore it’s difficult to track what happens to the overwhelming majority of the people in the program.
Lawyers said asylumseekers without legal representation who have been sent back this way likely have no way of advocating for themselves.