Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Asylum-bid OKs for kids askew
Regional offices’ approval rates range from 15 percent to 86 percent
LOS ANGELES — For unaccompanied immigrant children seeking asylum in the U.S., where they apply seems to make a world of difference.
Youngsters whose applications are handled by the U.S. government’s regional offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles are far more likely to win approval from asylum officers than those applying in Chicago or Houston, according to data obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request.
The figures offer a snapshot of how the government is handling the surge over the past two years in the number of Central American children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border unaccompanied by adults. Tens of thousands of youngsters — many of them fleeing gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — have overflowed U.S. shelters and further clogged the nation’s overwhelmed immigration courts.
Under federal law, these children can apply to remain in the country in a process that involves an interview with an asylum officer from one of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services’ eight regional offices. To win their cases, they must show that they have been persecuted or are in danger of persecution.
As of January, asylum officers had rendered decisions in the cases of nearly 5,800 such children who arrived since May 2014, according to the figures.
Overall, 37 percent were granted asylum, but the rate varied dramatically from 86 percent at the San Francisco office, which handles applications for a swath of the Pacific Northwest, to 15 percent in Chicago, which covers 15 states from Ohio to Idaho.
Los Angeles, which covers parts of California and Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii, granted asylum in 53 percent of its cases, while only 16 percent were approved by Houston, which handles Texas, Colorado, New Mexico and other states. The asylum offices in New York; Miami; Newark, N.J.; and Arlington, Va., had approval rates ranging between 20 percent and 30 percent.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had no explanation for the disparities. Asylum claims are evaluated on a case-by-case basis, and every child’s application gets an additional review by a supervisory officer, spokesman Claire Nicholson said.
Children who are turned down get a second chance to plead their cases before an immigration judge. If they fail at that stage, they can be deported. Immigration lawyers said most of those children are still awaiting decisions on their applications because it can take months or years for their cases to be heard in court. But previous studies show the courts also vary widely in how often they approve asylum.
Immigration lawyers and activists offered a variety of possible reasons for the regional differences.
Asylum officers are expected to make their decisions in line with federal court rulings on immigration, and the appeals courts on the West Coast are more liberal. Also, California has funded immigration attorneys for children since the surge, enabling these youngsters to make a stronger case for asylum, activists said. Office culture and interviewing techniques also could play a role.
“For us, it is a puzzle, and we do find it baffling,” said Lisa Koop of the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago. “Whether it is the front-line asylum officer or their supervisors or someone higher up at the Chicago asylum office is unclear to us.”
Immigration lawyers in liberal San Francisco said asylum officers there take their time and use child-friendly language during interviews to draw details out of traumatized youngsters who often are reluctant to share their pasts with strangers. Immigration attorney Pablo Lastra said these officers seem to ask questions to get at why children should be granted asylum, not why they shouldn’t.
The data on the regional offices show that more than 10,000 unaccompanied children who arrived in the U.S. since May 2014 have applied for asylum. More than 90 percent were Central American.
Girls were more likely to win their cases. As of January, asylum officers across the country approved 43 percent of girls’ and 33 percent of boys’ applications.
Ann Naffier, an immigration attorney at Justice for Our Neighbors in Des Moines, Iowa, said she was surprised by the regional disparity and to see similar asylum cases could have such dramatically different results.
“It is not unfair to the kids in California, it’s just unfair to our kids,” she said.
Iowa gardener Alejandro Lopez — the father of one of Naffier’s clients — said he knew it would be an uphill battle for his son, Jonathan, to win asylum after coming to the U.S. in 2014.
The teen took a 2½-hour trip to Omaha, Neb., for an interview with an asylum officer who reports to the Chicago office. A nervous Lopez answered questions for about an hour, relating how Salvadoran gang members threatened to kill him and riddled his motorbike with bullets.
Lopez, now 18, lost his bid and will make a final plea before a judge in February.
“The lawyer said it’s really hard for us to win,” his father said. “The only solution might be later on if you fall in love and find a wife who is American. He’s still young, but that might be the only solution.”