Lawsuit say asylum seekers improperly detained in crackdown
NEW YORK » Hanad Abdi fled Somalia two summers ago after men killed his father and stole the family farm. His only hope for safety and freedom, he said, was to flee to America.
But after smuggling himself to Ethiopia, then Brazil, then thousands of miles through South and Central America, he landed in an immigration detention center in snowy Batavia, New York, where he was held for 10 months while he applied for asylum.
“I came to get help. I didn’t come to go to jail,” Abdi said in a phone interview from Minneapolis, where he has been staying with relatives since his release in August. “I wasn’t a criminal.”
A federal judge in Rochester heard arguments Friday in a lawsuit brought by the New York Civil Liberties Union and the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of more than 30 men, including Abdi, who were held for extended periods at the detention facility in Batavia.
The civil liberties lawyers say people who came to the U.S. seeking asylum were once routinely granted parole, meaning they could stay out of jail while their applications were considered. But they say the practice of awarding parole to asylum seekers began declining during the Obama administration and all but ended in the Trump administration.
“The harsh truth is that asylum seekers who have fled danger in their home countries are left to languish in American detention without any real opportunity for release,” said Mariko Hirose, litigation director at the refugee assistance project.
A spokesman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in New York declined to comment on pending litigation. The Department of Justice had no comment.
The United States granted asylum to 26,124 people in 2015, the most recent figures available. Those seeking shelter from their home countries often just show up at the border and turn themselves in. They are detained and interviewed to determine whether they have a “credible fear” of persecution or torture in their home country because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion. They must fill out an application and then attend court hearings.