Trained asylum officers replaced

WASHINGTON — Border Patrol agents are beginning to screen migrant families for “credible fear” instead of highly trained asylum officers who are charged with determining whether applicants qualify for U.S. protection, the Los Angeles Times has learned.

The first Border Patrol agents arrived last week to start training at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, the nation’s largest immigrant family detention center, according to lawyers working there and several employees at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The move expands the Trump administration’s push for Border Patrol agents to take over the interviews that mark the first step in the lengthy asylum process. Border Patrol agents began training to conduct asylum interviews in late April, but agents have now deployed to family detention facilities for the first time.

As a result, Border Patrol agents — law enforcement personnel who detain migrant families at the border — will also have authority to decide whether those families have a “credible fear” of being persecuted in their home countries.

Customs and Border Protection has provided few details about the Border Patrol asylum training and has not publicly acknowledged whether agents have yielded significantly lower approval rates than federal asylum officers, but internal communications and other official documents obtained by The Times indicate early problems with the program.

The Citizenship and Immigration Services personnel requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. Neither the agency nor Customs and Border Protection, the Border Patrol’s parent agency, immediately responded to requests for comment by deadline.

Agents at Dilley are not wearing the Border Patrol’s well-known olive-green uniforms, and are identifying themselves to migrant families and children as asylum officers, said Shay Fluharty, an attorney with the Dilley Pro Bono Project, who has been in interviews conducted by the agents.