WINGER-EBADOLAHI • The cruelty of process is obvious

at migrants. This is the group that has been making determinations that have life or death consequences for people seeking asylum.

People who have fled life-threatening violence and are apprehended by Border Patrol are detained and questioned, and then interviewed only a day or two after their dangerous journey. Their trauma is still fresh and the opportunities to prepare for the interview are limited. Many do not have the help of an attorney, and those who do are often prevented by CBP from contacting and consulting with their attorney. Unfamiliar with the U.S. immigration system, often facing a language barrier, and without legal assistance, people seeking asylum are particularly vulnerable to abuse.

Within detention centers, people seeking asylum and attorneys report that Border Patrol agents have conducted the “credible fear” interviews like criminal interrogations. People seeking asylum tell of being yelled at, cut off when responding, and scolded if they cry or exhibit other signs of trauma. Instead of being met with trauma-informed, welltrained experts on asylum law, many applicants have been forced to present their cases to aggressive, mostly male immigration enforcement agents.

The results are predictable. People have withdrawn their asylum applications or remained silent, ultimately jeopardizing their ability to access safety in the U.S. And Border Patrol agents have consistently lower credible fear approval rates than asylum officers in the same period. Between last August, when Border Patrol agents began carrying out a significant number of credible fear interviews, and May of this year, Border Patrol agents only granted 35% of all credible fear claims. Over the same period, asylum officers granted 57% of credible fear claims. It seems clear that the goal of this policy is to slam shut the first door people seeking asylum must come through.

On Monday, a court ordered a temporary halt to the program. The court found that Border Patrol agents have not been properly trained to conduct these sensitive interviews.

The program should never be restarted. CBP officials, including Border Patrol agents, must not be permitted to be gatekeepers to the asylum process. Adversarial by the nature of their enforcement role, such officials cannot substitute the neutral, expert role that professionally trained asylum officers have long filled. It is immoral and illegal to place the fate of survivors and other people seeking asylum in the hands of a law enforcement agency tasked with capturing and detaining immigrants.