Historian
Senior U.S. Advocate
Refugees International
Introduction
President-elect Biden has promised a broad array of reforms that would impact refugees, asylum seekers, and other forced migrants. He has indicated he will restore Temporary Protected Status, place a moratorium on deportations, and end prolonged detention and for-profit detention centers. These are all crucially important to the safety and security of migrants and their families in the United States and other countries, especially in the Western Hemisphere. President-elect Biden has also promised to end the Trump administration’s policy of making asylum seekers “remain in Mexico” while awaiting hearings in U.S. immigration court.
However, in recent weeks, a flawed and fatalistic view of migration to the U.S. southern border has taken hold in some media accounts and reports. It goes like this: President Trump’s Remain in Mexico (or MPP) policy has created a logistical and humanitarian crisis at the southern U.S. border that, despite President-elect Biden’s promises, will be very difficult to undo. Further, a combination of pull and push factors (especially in the wake of hurricanes in Central America) will lead to increased migration to the southern U.S. border this spring such that President-elect Biden will have little choice but to keep the border sealed under an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as he attempts to deal with COVID-19 in border states and fulfill other immigration policy promises—including uniting families the Trump administration ripped apart two years ago.
There are several problems with this line of argument, many of which are addressed in this report. Most fundamentally, keeping the border sealed and migrants waiting in Mexico will perpetuate serious abuses. Family separations and other violations of human rights, as well as violations of U.S. law, will continue to occur under a Biden administration that does not implement new policies at the border. Recently, MPP and the CDC border closure have exacerbated smuggling and trafficking at the border, as well as other forms of abuse against migrants. For example, the CDC order has led to the repatriation of Nicaraguan dissidents as well as the return of a sexually abused Guatemalan child. It has also led asylum seekers to try to cross undetected in remote desert areas. Further, unwinding MPP and allowing asylum seekers to ask for protection at the border is not only the right thing to do, but also feasible with the proper planning. Indeed, it presents the incoming administration with an opportunity to rethink migration management, especially for those seeking asylum, and to implement a new screening process that is both more humane and more efficient.
President-elect Biden has invoked President Franklin Delano Roosevelt—healer, rebuilder, and practical problem solver—as a model. During World War II, Roosevelt planned and devoted significant resources to resolving the largest displacement crisis the world had ever known. This planning was part of an effort to ensure that what happened in 1939 to the S.S. St. Louis—a ship of asylum-seeking Jews turned away by the United States and other countries—would not occur again.
During his first week in office, President-elect Biden should issue an executive order on border asylum policy that departs dramatically from that which President Trump put forth during his first week. President Biden’s executive order should give asylum seekers access to the border and provide for cooperation with border states and shelters to safely and humanely receive asylum seekers. It should allocate resources to alternatives to detention, including case management, and to improved adjudication of asylum claims in immigration courts, especially through provision of legal services. It should also commit to ending practices associated with expedited removal of asylum seekers that have resulted in abuses, and to the use of parole to unwind MPP. Finally, through revocation of Trump administration decisions, regulations, and policies, as well as through settlement of lawsuits and the withdrawal of appeals to federal courts regarding these policies, the executive order should commit to restoring asylum eligibility to those who have fled persecution but have been denied or prevented from obtaining protection.
In taking such action, President-elect Biden would be fulfilling not only his campaign promises but the commitment he made when he voted for Senate passage of the Refugee Act of 1980. That law, supported by large majorities of both parties, promised to ensure fair access to asylum at the border.
This report shows why it is imperative that the Biden administration do this rather than keep us mired in a policy framework that does not work and that has led to a cycle of crises. It does so by looking back to a momentous time of transition about thirty years ago. With the Cold War ending, the United States had to rethink its assumptions about who merited refugee status. Only a handful of refugee resettlement slots in the U.S. Refugee Program were allotted to Central Americans, and the United States had not yet developed clear procedures for effectively handling asylum seekers at the southwestern border. Rather than acknowledge the forces pushing people northward, U.S. policymakers adopted a paradigm that was focused primarily, if not exclusively, on deterrence. This is a paradigm that we are still in today.
At different points over the past thirty years, humanitarian and constructive policies have tempered the harshness of this paradigm, and such policies have also brought benefits in terms of cost and efficiency. These policies need to be adapted and scaled up. But they also need to be placed within a welcoming framework that does not presume asylum seekers are a threat. Instead of devoting tremendous resources to a futile and rights-violating attempt to block those already on the move, we have to try to better understand the drivers of migration, which, for Central Americans, include corruption, poverty, insecurity, and violence. We must devote resources instead to humanely receiving asylum seekers and adjudicating their claims fairly. We also have to stop assuming that the best place to manage admissions of all Central Americans seeking protection is at the border.
The Deterrence Paradigm
The deterrence paradigm has been implemented repeatedly using the same counterproductive strategies.
. . . .
*************
Read the rear of Yael’s article at the link.
👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼⚖️🗽🇺🇸
Folks like my Round Table 🛡⚔️ colleague Judge Paul Grussendorf and I have been “preaching” for an abandonment of the unlawful, inhumane, incredibly wasteful, and demonstrably ineffective “deterrence paradigm.”
The skill set to establish a lawful, better, humane, efficient asylum system, consistent with our Constitutional, statutory, and international obligations is out there, mainly in the private/NGO/academic communities. I/O/W the “practical scholars, litigators, and advocates” in the NDPA.
It’s a just a question of the incoming Biden/Harris Administration getting beyond the “enforcement only” mentality, personnel, and White Nationalist nativist thinking that currently infects the entire USG immigration bureaucracy, at all levels. Replace the current failed leadership with experts from the NDPA and empower them to work with other experts in the private sector to institute a better system that would be no more costly, likely less, than the current “built to fail” abominations that not only waste resources but destroy human lives and are an ugly stain on our national conscience!
I also appreciate Yael’s recognition of the pressing and compelling need to “end the Clown Show 🤡🦹🏿♂️☠️@ EOIR:”
Immigration Court Reform
EOIR policies during the Trump administration have been at odds with principles of due process and judicial independence. These include the imposition of numeric case completion quotas and docket management policies that deprive asylum seekers of procedural protections; appointment of judges who almost exclusively come from prosecutorial backgrounds (especially working at DHS and in law enforcement); promotion to permanent positions on an expanded BIA of judges with asylum denial rates much higher than the national average; and procedures that limit the ability of claimants to effectively appeal their cases. The Biden administration should conduct an urgent review of EOIR hiring practices and immigration court procedures and develop recommendations for regulatory or structural changes consistent with the protection needs of asylum seekers.
The critical “urgent review” should be done by a “Team of Experts from the NDPA” brought in on an immediate temporary basis, if necessary, in accordance with Federal Personnel Rules, to replace the current Senior “Management” @ EOIR as well as the entire BIA. There’s no better way to fix the system than to take over management, restore fairness and order, and get inside the current disastrous mess @ the Clown Show 🤡🦹🏿♂️! Importantly, the “Team of Experts” with effective operational control could immediately begin fixing (and conversely stop aggravating and creating) the glaring problems while putting the structure and personnel in place for long-term reforms.
Lives ☠️⚰️ are at stake here! We need ACTION, not merely study and evaluation. “Fixing the system on the fly” may be challenging, but it’s perfectly within the capabilities of the right team of NDPA experts! Dems often prefer study and dialogue to effective actions. As Toby Keith would say: We need “a little less talk and a lot more action.”
(Toby Keith: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22a+little+less+talk+and+a+lot+more+action&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari)
Due Process Forever! It’s NOT rocket 🚀 science!
PWS
12-30-20