Plan seen gutting asylum system

Columbus immigration attorney Julie Nemecek already has to manage her clients’ expectations about the process of applying for asylum.

Now, with new federal regulations proposed, she might have to tell them that it is nearly impossible for them to win an asylum case and stay in the United States.

“There is no point to asylum if this regulation goes into effect,” Nemecek said of a 161-page rule proposed by the federal government on June 15.

Immigration advocates say the changes would gut the country’s asylum system and could cause uncounted people to be sent back to countries where they are at risk of being killed. The comment period closes on Wednesday. The government then will review and address the comments and issue a final rule.

“The proposal makes it almost impossible to seek or receive asylum,” said Sunil Varghese, policy director of the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Asylums seekers come to the United States to seek safety after having fled violence, persecution and often threats of death in their home countries on the basis of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a certain social group, or political opinion. Once here, they may apply for asylum and remain in the country legally while they wait — often for years — to go to immigration court and plead their case.

If the new rule goes into effect, some might not even have the right to plead their case before an immigration judge, advocates say.

Even if someone has been persecuted on all five grounds, as many Black Mauritanians living in Columbus were in their northwest African nation, it can be difficult to win an asylum case under the current system due to language barriers and the inability of some asylum seekers to afford an attorney or gather evidence, Nemecek said.

She said due process can be lacking in immigration courts. They are not like civil or criminal courts in that they are run by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, and judges often act more like prosecutors than judges, she said.

At the end of September, 339,836 asylum applications were pending. In the previous 12 months, 96,861 had been received, and 19,945 were approved, according to data on the Citizenship and Immigration Services website.

In a release issued five days before the rule was proposed, the departments of Justice and Homeland Security said the rule is intended to make the adjudication of asylum claims more efficient, reducing the often years-long wait for a hearing and a hefty backlog of cases.

Overall, the release said, the rule “would allow the Departments to more effectively separate baseless claims from meritorious ones. This would better ensure groundless claims do not delay or divert resources from deserving claims.”

Among the proposals are: allowing applications to be denied without a hearing; allowing an application to be deemed “frivolous;” changing the definitions of social group, political opinion, persecution and firm resettlement; and raising the burden of proof.

The proposed rule has sweeping provisions that are typically broken up into separate proposed rules, Varghese said.

“There are countless different provisions” in the proposed rule, Varghese said. “It covers the whole system and is designed to gut and take down the asylum system.”

He called it a “complete restrictionist rewrite of the asylum system.”

Varghese said the proposed rule seems contrary to the intent of the laws it aims to amend and international treaties.

“If this proposal were to become a final rule as proposed, it would lead us to deporting thousands to places where they will be persecuted or tortured,” Varghese said. “That should weigh heavily on our conscience.” dking@dispatch.com @Danaeking