San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Story offers ideas for change in system
“Returned” is a multipart series launched by the Union-tribune this year that investigates the U.S. asylum system.
The first installment, published in February, told the story of a Nicaraguan woman who is waiting in Mexico to find out whether the United States will grant her protection. The second installment uncovered evidence of disparities and bias in asylum outcomes through an analysis of immigration court records. The third installment looked at what can happen when the system doesn’t protect someone who had a legitimate fear of death.
This fourth and final installment explores what could be done to make the asylum system more closely align with its original mission — to protect the world’s most vulnerable.
Q: How long have you worked on this project?
A: I started working on “Returned” in the first part of 2019. Many times when I was interviewing an expert for a piece, I would add on big-picture questions about the asylum system and what they would do to address the issues they felt were most pressing. But in many ways, I’ve also been reporting out this piece since I began covering immigration in 2016. From my first conversations with sources over coffee as I got to know this beat, the asylum system stuck out to me as something to investigate.
Q: Why write a piece entirely about possible solutions or changes?
A: We spent most of the series looking at ways in which the system does not work, ways in which it falls short of its promise to give refuge to people fleeing certain kinds of harm. While we’ve already mentioned some of these suggested solutions, like moving immigration court to the judicial branch, I thought it would be important to leave people with an informed sense of what could be done, and the variety of changes that come up in conversations with the people working on this every day. So much of journalism focuses on the problems, but the asylum system is not a lost cause. There are many possible changes that could garner enough bipartisan support to make a difference.
Q: Did you find anything in your reporting that surprised you that didn’t make it into the story?
A: Yes. A Canadian judge found that the United States’ asylum system was not humanitarian enough to continue honoring the countries’ “safe third country” agreement — an agreement that an asylum seeker must apply for protection in whichever of the two countries that person reaches first. This agreement was possible because the two countries initially considered their asylum systems to be similar enough and based on the same values.
However, the judge ruled over the summer that this was not actually the case, in large part due to the United States’ decision to hold many thousands of asylum seekers in detention facilities for the duration of their cases. The Canadian government has since appealed, arguing that ending this agreement would send more asylum seekers to the border than the country can handle, echoing the United States’ own restrictionist language.
Q: One of the recommendations is to process asylum seekers in or near their home countries. But how would that be any different from the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy that has been widely criticized?
A: I’ve covered the issues with the “Remain in Mexico” program, which forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are processed in U.S. courts, extensively. These asylum seekers have to be able to cross back and forth for hearings, which generally means they have to live in Mexico’s northern border region where they are left on their own for food and housing and where they are frequently targeted and attacked because they are migrants. But there are other ways to process people besides requiring them to come all the way here.
In the past we’ve had small programs in other places, such as Cuba and Central America, that allow certain people to be processed in or near their home countries. Experts told me this doesn’t work for everybody — the danger some face is too immediate for them to stay put long enough to be processed. And there are some countries where this doesn’t work because the government there will retaliate against those seen applying for protection. Processing would have to happen quickly regardless to be useful to people who need it. An Obamaera program for children in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras took about six months to process people, and that was too long for the ones who were looking to the program for protection.
Q: What happened to Bárbara, the Nicaraguan woman from the first installment who is waiting in Tijuana for her hearing in the United States?
A: Bárbara’s asylum hearing got postponed, along with all of the other “Remain in Mexico” cases, because of the pandemic. Her court date has changed numerous times, and there is no indication that judges will actually start hearing these cases again anytime soon. I will keep following her case as it progresses.