Deputy Director
ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Program
PHOTO: ACLU
Reporter
Associated Press
Reporter, AP
PHOTO: Pulitzer website
Elliot Spagot and Julie Watson report for AP:
SAN DIEGO (AP) — The Biden administration has quietly tasked six humanitarian groups with recommending which migrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. instead of being rapidly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that block people from seeking asylum.
The groups will determine who is most vulnerable in Mexico, and their criteria has not been made public. It comes as large numbers of people are crossing the southern border and as the government faces intensifying pressure to lift the public health powers instituted by former President Donald Trump and kept in place by President Joe Biden during the coronavirus pandemic.
Several members of the consortium spoke to The Associated Press about the criteria and provided details of the system that have not been previously reported. The government is aiming to admit to the country up to 250 asylum-seekers a day who are referred by the groups and is agreeing to that system only until July 31. By then, the consortium hopes the Biden administration will have lifted the public health rules, though the government has not committed to that.
So far, a total of nearly 800 asylum-seekers have been let in since May 3, and members of the consortium say there is already more demand than they can meet.
The groups have not been publicly identified except for the International Rescue Committee, a global relief organization. The others are London-based Save the Children; two U.S.-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense; and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to two people with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for public release.
Asylum Access, which provides services to people seeing asylum in Mexico, characterized its role as minimal.
The effort started in El Paso, Texas, and is expanding to Nogales, Arizona.
A similar but separate mechanism led by the American Civil Liberties Union began in late March and allows 35 families a day into the United States at places along the border. It has no end date.
The twin tracks are described by participating organizations as an imperfect transition from so-called Title 42 authority, named for a section of an obscure 1944 public health law that Trump used in March 2020 to effectively end asylum at the Mexican border. With COVID-19 vaccination rates rising, Biden is finding it increasingly difficult to justify the expulsions on public health grounds and faces demands to end it from the U.N. refugee agency and members of his own party and administration.
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Read the full article at the link.
Well, I’ll give them this. “Farming out” the asylum system to these NGO experts is better than the Trump approach. The Trump regime “outsourced” the American asylum system to Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.
The common denominators among those countries is that the are all notorious for human rights abuses, corrupt government, dysfunctional legal systems, and lack of any semblance of a fair, functioning asylum adjudication system. Additionally, all are major senders of asylum seekers to America.
But, the Biden Administration’s “under the counter” approach is still fundamentally wrong! It’s yet another “haste makes waste gimmick” that lacks transparency, clear standards, accountability, and most of all, operates outside of any legal framework!
That’s a recipe for arbitrariness, abuse, and unfairness. Even if the system were to produce decent results, the lack of transparency robs it of credibility. It’s therefore likely to be attacked by both advocates and restrictionists while being panned in the press — a self-created “worst case” scenario of the type Dem Administrations seem to specialize in when it comes to immigration and human rights!
The solution here is to do what many of us have been recommending since the day the election results became final. That is, bring in outside experts to USCIS to lead and revitalize the Asylum Officer screening program and bring in real judges, largely from the outside, — progressive practical experts in asylum law committed to human rights and due process — to EOIR to establish legitimate precedents and insure fair, humane, and uniform treatment of asylum seekers.
It’s possible, indeed probable, that the U.S. representatives of some of the NGOs involved would be among the best experts to do this — leading human rights authorities like Mark Hatfield at HIAS, Wendy Young at KIND, and Wendy Wylegala, also of KIND are obvious choices.
So, put them and other practical experts like Professor Karen Musalo (Center for Gender & Refugee Studies), Eleanor Acer (Human Rights First), Professor Stephen Legomsky (former USCIS Chief Counsel), Associate Dean Jaya Ramji Nogales (Temple Law), Judge Ilyce Shugall (Round Table), Dean Kevin Johnson (UC Davis), Michelle Mendez (CLINIC), Professor Lenni Benson (Safe Passage Project), Professor Ingrid Eagly (UCLA Law), Laura Lynch (NILC), Professor Stephen Yale Loehr (Cornell Law), Jason Dzubow (The Asylumist), Professor Debi Anker (Harvard Law), Professor Michele Pistone (VIISTA/Villanova Law), and others like them on the payroll at USCIS and EOIR and let them fix the asylum system!
Experts like this could, if properly empowered, in relatively short order, establish a system that is legal, constitutional, fair, generous, humane, practical, efficient, and that complies with all of our international obligations. In other words, a “model system” that would serve the best interests of humanity and our nation!
The current opaque, chaotic, arbitrary mess at our Southern Border (essentially the Biden Administration’s version of “Hunger Games”) serves nobody’s interests excepts cartels and smugglers. It’s also likely to kill record numbers of asylum seekers unless fixed, NOW! https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/summer-migrant-deaths-southern-border/2021/06/03/a03d7bb8-c3a6-11eb-8c34-f8095f2dc445_story.html
Bringing in the experts seems like an outstanding, “no brainer” alternative to the godawful, dysfunctional, disgraceful mess that the Trump kakistocracy left at USCIS and EOIR, much of which continues to ramble on, further off the rails all the time, under Mayorkas and Garland. The Biden Administration can’t, and won’t, get the job done on asylum and racial justice without radical, yet logical and badly needed, personnel and leadership changes at USCIS and EOIR!
🇺🇸🗽⚖️🧑🏽⚖️Due Process Forever!
PWS
06-04-21