A Land of Immigrants Turning It Back on Immigrants

The National Park Services tells us how the Statute of Liberty arrived to sit at the gateway of New York Harbor: “‘The Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World’ was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States and is recognized as a universal symbol of freedom and democracy. The Statue of Liberty was dedicated on October 28, 1886.  It was designated as a National Monument in 1924.  Employees of the National Park Service have been caring for the colossal copper statue since 1933.” Twenty years after it was placed on what is now known as Liberty Island, Emma Lazarus’ immortal poem (above) was inscribed on a bronze plaque and placed on the pedestal.

What America is witnessing today, the separation of children, stems from the Trump administration’s newly implemented “zero tolerance” policy, whereby those crossing the border illegally and without an asylum claim, are arrested and charged with a misdemeanor. Until President Trump signed an order that kept children with their parents, the instant a criminal border arrest was made, any accompanying minor children were taken away from the arrestee and placed into some form of custodial care.

Theoretically, without stopping “zero tolerance,” Trump made the above decision to stop separating children from arrested parents, throwing the border agents into chaos, a fact made even more difficult by a San Diego federal court order setting time limits for separated children to be reunited with their parents, even if that would take place in a criminal detention facility where an earlier federal court order limited how long innocent children could be housed in such criminal facilities. With clear shortages of criminal holding facilities, military bases and convenience empty buildings were being deployed to handle the overload. It’s a confused mess.

What really complicates this situation is U.S. law, directly and based on its acceptance of international treaties, where an individual seeks asylum. We must entertain asylum-seekers! But too often, border agents just ignore that legal mandate, and there is little that the asylum-seeker can do about that. When an asylum seeker is recognized, that clogs up the system; deportations are not supposed to throw out asylum-seekers. The run-of-the-mill border crossers, who do have not bona fide asylum claims, do not have such rights.

Most such ordinary deportations, even before Trump’s acceleration of the effort to oust undocumented aliens from the United States, were pretty much “round ‘em up and ship them off.” 85% of deportations actually. No courts. No trials. Just “out.” Even folks with valid visas. Lots of random subjectivity. The July 2nd Los Times explains:

“Three speed deportations programs exist under various provisions and names — and their use has been growing for years. Expedited removal allows the government to quickly deport tens of thousands of people who lack proper entry documents at the border. Reinstatement applies to persons who return to the U.S. after been previously deported, no matter how old the prior removal was. Finally, under a mechanism called administrative removal, noncitizens who are not lawful permanent residents — including valid visa holders, those with temporary protected status, or those enrolled in DACA — can be summarily deported if a Homeland Security official believes the immigrant has previously been convicted of an ‘aggravated felony.’ (What qualifies as an aggravated felony is an intensely complex legal question, and the federal courts have often had to correct the immigration authorities.)

“Immigrants in these circumstances are not allowed to use certain defenses ordinarily available in immigration court, such as claims that recognize family ties or length of residence. Instead, they enter a lawless zone in which the process moves quickly; sometimes it’s over in a matter of minutes. In the case of expedited removal at the border, noncitizens are almost entirely barred from seeking federal court review — even if immigration agents fail to meet legal standards for assessing whether the person is eligible for asylum.

“While each speed deportation program operates differently, their outcomes carry all of the legal sanctions associated with a fully litigated removal order. Yet it is front-line immigration agents — who are not lawyers and typically lack extensive legal training — who act as judge, jury and bailiff.

“This is not to say that those who get court hearings before immigration judges experience fairness. On the contrary, immigration courts are, as one judge put it, a place where cases with death penalty-like consequences are adjudicated with the resources of traffic court. A decade ago, a trio of scholars called immigration court ‘refugee roulette’ to underscore the random outcomes of asylum claims depending solely on which judge got the case. The lack of access to counsel, especially in immigration detention prisons, often leads immigrants with viable cases to give up.

“What few protections exist in immigration court are, of course, being dismantled by the Trump administration. For instance, the Justice Department is demanding that immigration judges meet unrealistic case completion quotas of at least 700 cases a year, and at the same times is restricting judges’ ability to manage their dockets by administratively closing cases where appropriate.

“Those threatened by speed deportation have one safety net: admission to the U.S. when they face persecution or torture in their home countries. These protections emanate from international law and are reflected in U.S. law. That is how some asylum seekers are able to get to immigration court. By suggesting that every single person arriving at the border be removed, Trump not only embraces the cruelest path available, he violates a fundamental commitment to law and justice.” But the system just doesn’t work that way. People with the most legitimate claims for asylum are very often turned away and placed back to the nations where all-too-often they will be tortured and killed.

Immigration judges report to the Department of Justice and hired and fired accordingly. They do not enjoy the “appointment for life” status of more traditional federal judges. What is dispensed is more a matter of luck than any semblance of predictable due process based on evidence and a careful consideration by the court. What’s worse, those applying for asylum are no longer being provided with legal support (a new DOJ cost-saver); they are on their own against a conveyor-belt legal system that mostly decides against them. Attorney General Jeff Sessions also unilaterally removed domestic abuse from the legitimate bases for granting asylum.

Simply looking at the number of cases, knowing that judges that cannot process fast enough are removed and replaced, you can clearly see that true justice – the obvious spirit if not the letter of the relevant asylum laws – is literally impossible. What we claim is a system of due process for asylum-seekers is nothing more than a charade.

This is not a mass shipment of MS-13 gangsters into the U.S. The overwhelming majority of border crossers are just ordinary but desperate people. The risk-of-life issues in their home countries, particularly in Central America, are real. And while we used to provide support to those countries to ameliorate some of the danger, Trump has cut that aid dramatically, all the while ignoring that demand for narcotics here in the United States is the driver for most of this ultra-violence.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have turned into one of the cruelest nations on earth while simply ignoring that it is our drug addiction problem that fuels the danger, and it is guns purchased here in the United States and smuggled south that have made so much of Mexico and Central America so violent.