Asylum seekers sue government: ‘What we got was a prison’
Homeland Security holds many in indefinite detention
Asylum seekers who have been held in U.S. detention centers since applying to enter the country filed a classaction lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday in the latest legal attack against President Trump’s attempts to limit immigration.
The suit claims that Homeland Security has violated U.S. law by refusing to allow entire groups of asylum seekers to be released on parole from prisons and detention centers while their applications are decided.
The lawsuit, filed by a group of civil rights organizations in federal court in the District of Columbia on behalf of nine plaintiffs, estimates that more than 1,000 asylum seekers face indefinite detention even though they have passed initial screenings to verify their stories and pose no threat to national security.
“We came to the U.S. seeking freedom, and what we got was a prison,” Abelardo Asensio Callol, 30, a software engineer from Cuba, said by phone from the York County, Pa., Prison where he’s been held for several months.
Asylum is an immigration status granted to people already in the USA who fear they will be persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality or political views if forced to return to their home country. The United States has approved an average of 23,668 asylum applications a year over the past decade.
People who present themselves at U.S. borders are allowed to claim asylum. Homeland Security agents interview those people, and if the agent de- termines the applicant has a “credible fear” of returning home, the asylum seeker is allowed to present his or her case before an immigration judge. In
2009, the Obama administration instituted a policy that made it easier for asylum applicants to be released on parole while their cases were decided.
The Trump administration has used a variety of measures to limit legal and illegal immigration, from its controversial travel ban mostly targeting majority-Muslim countries to its attempts to limit refugee admissions to the USA. The asylum program has not been spared.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the asylum system is fraught with abuse by immigrants coached on what they have to say and “dirty immigration lawyers” who exploit loopholes in the system. During a speech in October, Sessions said more than half of asylum applicants released on parole never show up for their court hearings, indicating “their claim of fear was simply a ruse to enter the country illegally.”
“The system is being gamed,” Sessions said.
Immigration advocates disputed those numbers and said the only ones gaming the system are Homeland Security officials who treat asylum seekers as criminals.
Hardy Vieux, legal director for Human Rights First and one of the attorneys who filed the lawsuit, said every presidential administration has the authority to implement its own policies, but the Constitution and the
72-year-old Administrative Procedure Act require that new regulations be implemented through a formal process to ensure they are legal and constitutional. Vieux said the Trump administration has violated those tenets by keeping the 2009 Obama-era memo in place, yet eliminating the possibility of parole for asylum seekers.