🤯 ADMINISTRATION’S “SLOW WALK” OF AFGHAN ASYLUM CASES DRAWS COURT CHALLENGE!

Mary Meg McCarthy
Mary Meg McCarthy
Executive Director
National Immigrant Justice Center
PHOTO: Linkedin

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Kirkland & Ellis LLP and NIJC represent class action of people facing prolonged waits for permanent immigration protection following 2021 evacuation from Afghanistan.

Afghan people seeking asylum are suing the U.S. government over delays in processing their asylum applications, nearly two years after they first arrived in the United States as part of a U.S. operation to evacuate allies who faced threats of persecution as the Taliban retook power in Afghanistan.

The plaintiffs in Ahmed v. Department of Homeland Security include people who worked for U.S. agencies in Kabul, women’s rights advocates, a healthcare worker, a teacher, and a journalist. Their temporary immigration status in the United States is set to expire in less than five months. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, challenges the failure of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to adjudicate the asylum applications filed by seven plaintiffs, and thousands of other Afghan people resettled in the United States, within the 150-day deadline set by Congress.

The plaintiffs ask the court to order DHS and USCIS to decide all overdue Afghan asylum adjudications within 30 days and to abide by the 150-day deadline in the future.

Kirkland & Ellis LLP Litigation Partner Mike Williams, who is working on this pro bono case, said: “This is a case about broken promises and broken trust, but also about the United States breaking its own laws. That is why we are asking the Court to require the United States to keep its promises to these Afghan people seeking asylum. These asylum applicants are among the most vulnerable to come to our country, and they should not be in legal limbo.”

National Immigrant Justice Center Attorney Richard Caldarone, who is co-counsel in the case, said: “USCIS’s systematic failure to decide asylum applications for Afghan people in the timeline set by Congress is inexcusable. For thousands of people — particularly those who had to leave family behind in Afghanistan — USCIS’s delays compound the trauma of Taliban threats and violence. Afghan people were forced to flee their homes and their country because they worked for liberty, equality, and democracy; they deserve better.”

The plaintiffs came to the United States in August 2021 as part of the U.S. government’s Operation Allies Welcome, which allowed Afghan people who passed stringent security and background checks to resettle in the United States and receive two years of humanitarian parole while they applied for more permanent immigration status. Additionally, Congress passed legislation requiring DHS and USCIS to “expeditiously adjudicate” asylum applications within 150 days for Afghan people who were resettled under the operation.

But DHS and USCIS have adjudicated just 11 percent of the roughly 16,000 asylum applications filed by Afghan people evacuated to the United States. Thousands of applications have been pending well past the 150-day adjudication deadline, and many people will see their temporary parole status expire in August 2023. The safety of those who applied for asylum remains in limbo, and their spouses and children trapped in Afghanistan continue to live under constant threats of danger.

RELATED DOCUMENTS

Read the complaint

(1.5 MB)

2023-04-19_Ahmed_ECF_001_Class_Action_Complaint.pdf

TAGS

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This appears to be yet more “low hanging fruit” that the Administration could have handled without litigation to force them to do their job! What a HUGE, INSANE, UNNECESSARY WASTE of time and precious resources for the Biden Administration to choose to be perpetually “at war” with human rights experts and NGOs who have the knowledge and energy to craft and implement better legal approaches to refugees, asylum, adjudications, and restoring “order at the border!”

Casey Stengel
The Biden Administration’s propensity to adopt really bad approaches to human rights, asylum, and due process, and to “boot even the easy ones,” leaves Casey scratching his head and asking, “Can’t anyone here play this game?”
PHOTO: Rudi Reit
Creative Commons

Indeed, forcing Afghan evacuees into a ridiculously backlogged asylum adjudication system when they should have been admitted as refugees was a poorly conceived process in the first place! We sure could have used the Ambassadorial-level U.S. Refugee Coordinator originally created by the Refugee Act of 1980 but eventually swallowed by an intransigent State Department bureaucracy that always resented the function and its intended independence!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-24-23

🏴‍☠️☠️💀⚰️👎🏻THE HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSERS 🤮 ON OUR PAYROLL: DHS Detention Outlaws Outed Again By U.S. Judge!

From the WashPost:

https://apple.news/AJGOptsSWSUqO9DzDOLgXaA

U.S. judge rules ICE unlawfully jails unaccompanied migrant children once they turn 18

BY SPENCER S. HSU

JULY 2 AT 5:18 PM

A federal judge ruled Thursday that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has unlawfully transferred thousands of unaccompanied children who turned 18 to adult detention facilities without considering alternatives, in violation of a 2013 law.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington, D.C., said he will order changes “in the near future” after a bench trial in a class-action lawsuit brought in March 2018 on behalf of immigrant teenagers by the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC).

Contreras found that ICE does not train field offices to search for or select less-restrictive options than contractor or ICE prisons and jails for minors aging out of refugee resettlement facilities, and in fact guides aofficers to act contrary to a law protecting trafficking victims.

As a result, the judge ruled, many officers choose not to review minors’ files, contact group homes or shelters, or respond to their attorneys suggesting alternatives. Many of ICE’s largest field offices “nearly automatically” send minors to adult jails, even when in extreme cases their parents in the United States or other sponsors would take them, the judge wrote.

“These are not the decisionmaking processes that Congress required” in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act or federal rulemaking law, Contreras wrote in a 180-page opinion. “By failing to make decisions in the way Congress dictated, and based on the factors Congress identified as relevant, ICE fails to fulfill its obligations under the statute.”

The Justice Department did not have a comment, spokeswoman Alexa Vance said.

In a statement by plaintiffs, pro bono lead counsel Steve Patton of Kirkland & Ellis said: “This is a great victory for thousands of current and future unaccompanied immigrant children who turned 18 in government custody. We could not be happier with the court’s thorough and well-reasoned decision.”

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Read the rest of Spencer’s article at the link.

While a majority of the Supremes seem committed to willfully furthering a program of racist-motivated human rights violations by the Trump kakistocracy, lower Federal Courts appear to be disassociating themselves from the Illegal activities and racist agenda of a lawless regime.

Due Process Forever!

PWS

O7-02-20