WP: Asylum Seekers Often Mistreated, Study Funds

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Asylum Seekers Often Mistreated, Study Funds

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 9, 2005; Page A04

People seeking asylum in the United States are held in detention centers where they are frequently handcuffed and restrained with belly chains, put in solitary confinement for disciplinary reasons, and forced to share quarters with more dangerous inmates facing criminal prosecution, according to a study released yesterday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

The study by the bipartisan commission, created by Congress in 1998 to monitor religious freedom in other countries, concluded that the Department of Homeland Security's system for processing asylum seekers is often harsh, long and arbitrary.

The study concluded that asylum is granted or denied "depending on where the alien arrived, and which immigration judges or inspectors addressed the alien's claim." Refugees who landed in New York were much less likely to be granted asylum than those who landed in Miami, where the population of those with asylum is largely Cuban. Refugees who retain attorneys are about 11 times as likely to be granted asylum as those with no legal representation.

The report was released just days before the Senate is set to review legislation proposed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.) that would make it more difficult to gain asylum.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9163-2005Feb8.html

This should really put a twist in Mad Dog Sensenbrenner's panties: his whole basis for his latest police state initiative is that our asylum system is overly generous and a backdoor to terrorists. What the commission members told Congress yesterday was that that was really a crock, that our asylum system is already overly restrictive and that the notion that terrorists would subject themselves to the kind of scrutiny which goes along with seeking asylum in this country was patently absurd. Sensenbrenner and Tancredo and their fellows in the GOP anti-immigration caucus are now going to have to put in some serious late nights trying to discredit this report's findings. Given that it's 500 pages and based upon a five year study, I think they're going to have a very tough time refuting it.

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1. It almost seems that it isn't worthwhile to seek asylum.

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3. What's sad is that you can thank Bill Clinton for this disgrace

In the olden days, when asylum seekers presented themselves on US soil and claimed asylum, the law said that they could not be returned to the countries from which they'd come and where they might face persecution. Asylum seekers who were considered to be potential threats to the US could be detained while their applications for asylum were considered, but it was the exception, not the rule, and only a miniscule handful of asylum seekers wound up being detained. Those who were detained were understood to not be criminals, so were detained in so-called soft detention facilities, they weren't just tossed in jail.

Thanks to old sell 'em out Bill, all of that changed in 1996. In an effort to steal some repuke thunder, Clinton sought advice on immigration reform from the extreme right-wing, anti-immigrant lobbying group, the Federation for American Immigration Reform, or the Federation for Anti-Immigrant Racists to those of us who know and hate them. As a consequence, the '96 illegal immigration act began treating everyone as criminals and threats. Asylum seekers were automatically detained pending the outcomes of their cases and, since this created a greater demand for bed space than the INS soft detention facilities could provide, they simply threw them into general population in state and county jails, including the men, women, children, everybody, tossed in with hardcore serial murderers and rapists and treated to exactly the same rules and abusive treatment reserved for convicted felons.

In addition, they established the practice of expedited removal, whereby a low level border patrol officer could make a preliminary determination of the credibility of a person's asylum claim and, if they weren't satisfied, they could simply put them back on the plane and send them right back where they came from. So, for instance, say you're a Muslim woman who was gang raped in Bosnia, you flee the country, just barely managing to escape with your life, much less any of your worldly belongings or documents, you reach the US, and you're interrogated by a burly male enforcement officer who joined the INS in response to a recruitment poster which read "Join the Border Patrol and You Can Carry a Gun!" (I'm not making that up, by the way.) The officer demands to see your papers, which you probably don't have, then demands, in a language you don't speak, that you describe just exactly how your genitals were torn by the gang rapists, because he really doesn't believe you and he wants all of the gory details so he can cross reference them against things you said earlier for inconsistencies.

By now, you're probably wishing you'd just stayed with the rapists, so you're flustered and deeply uncomfortable, you have no idea what is expected of you or what elements you need to establish in order to make your case, you're not allowed to speak to an attorney or a social worker who might help you prepare for this one interview upon which so much depends, so you blow it and the border guard sends you back to the rapists on the next flight out. Or, if you're lucky, the guard maybe believes you and sends you to prison to be raped by US prison guards and inmates for the next few years while the INS gets around to deciding whether they really believe you or not. Great system, huh?

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4. What do you think the next step will be?

Will Congress and INS (or the agencies that now serve those purposes) act on these recommendations, particularly considering Sensenbrenner's current legislation? Or, do they just not give a fuck?

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5. Wish I knew

But with comprehensive immigration reform on the agenda for the next year, there are going to be a lot of people whose agendas will be either aided or hindered by this report, so it's going to receive a lot of attention.

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2. What a horrible way to treat people

Report on Asylum Seekers in Expedited Removal.

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6. kick

:kick: