LGBTQ Refugees – immigrationcourtside.com

🗽”My heart is full! My heart is full.” ❤️ — GW IMMIGRATION CLINIC SAVES ANOTHER LIFE!😎

GW Law Immigration Clinic Director Professor Alberto Benítez & Co-Director Paulina Vera

Please join me and Professor Vera in congratulating Immigration Clinic client, R-A-, from Nigeria, and his student-attorneys, Olivia Russo, LinLin Teng, Kennady Peek, Lea Aoun, and Megan Elman. The client’s asylum application was filed on December 3, 2018, his interview at the Asylum Office was on September 3, 2021, and he was granted asylum on May 18, 2022. We received the approval notice yesterday. The above-captioned is what R-A- said upon learning about his asylum grant.

R-A- is a gay man and LGTBQ+ activist. Throughout his entire life, R-A- experienced bullying and threats and had to keep his dating life a secret. However, things got even worse for him once he started an LGTBQ+ online magazine that received international attention. His family disowned him. A former classmate also set him up and he was physically beaten, sexually assaulted, called derogatory names, blackmailed, and outed. Since coming to the U.S., R-A- has continued to work on his online publication and volunteer for other LGBTQ+ initiatives. He hopes to one day attend law school in the U.S.

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Alberto Manuel Benitez

Professor of Clinical Law

Director, Immigration Clinic

The George Washington University Law School

650 20th Street, NW

Washington, DC 20052

(202) 994-7463

(202) 994-4946 fax

abenitez@law.gwu.edu

THE WORLD IS YOURS…

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Thanks for the update and for all you and your student attorneys do for American justice! Once again this shows the effect of expert representation of asylum seekers and the critical importance of winning cases at the first possible level, in this case the USCIS Asylum Office. Who knows what might have happened if this had been sent over to the “EOIR roulette wheel,” where life or death justice for immigrants has become a “high-stakes game of chance?” 🎰

Incredibly, three years ago, during the depths of the Trump regime, EOIR Executives actually misdirected agency resources into assembling bogus claims and misinformation intended to minimize and downplay the importance of representation in Immigration Court as well as to cover up the gross violations of due process that had become routine at EOIR. See, e.g., https://immigrationcourtside.com/2019/05/13/multiple-organizations-call-bs-on-eoirs-lie-sheet-no-legitimate-court-would-make-such-a-vicious-unprovoked-disingenuous-attac/

Perhaps even more remarkably, most of the folks who participated in that “intentional misdirection” remain on the agency payroll under Garland, a number in their same positions.

The lack of an Attorney General who “gets it” (apparently a staple of Dem Administrations) and who is willing to clean house and make the necessary aggressive progressive reforms to restore due process at EOIR and throughout the Immigration bureaucracy is yet another reason why the work of clinics and other battalions of the NDPA remains so critical! With a Government whose contempt for Due Process is amply illustrated by foot-dragging on Title 42 revocation, bogus, justice-denying “Dedicated Dockets,” and an appellate body that cuts corners while eschewing positive asylum guidance that would save lives, advocates for respondents are the only folks seriously interested in carrying out our Constitution and insuring that the rule of law is honored.

If that sounds like an indictment of Garland’s “leadership” on human rights, racial justice, and immigrant justice, that’s because it is!

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

05-30-22

🏴‍☠️PERSECUTED TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUAL DIES ⚰️IN EL SALVADOR WHILE HARRIS, GARLAND, & MAYORKAS FAIL TO RE-ESTABLISH LEGAL ASYLUM SYSTEM, MAKE LONG OVERDUE REFORMS!☠️ — VEEP Apparently Can’t Grasp Why Refugees Refuse To Stay In Countries Where They Are Likely To Be Persecuted & Die — The “Easily Fixable” Part Of The Problem Is NOT Thousands Of Miles Away In Foreign Countries, But With Garland’s & Mayorkas’s Inexcusable Failures To Act On Progressive Reforms Of Our Existing Legal System For Asylum Seekers!

Grim Reaper — “This Dude loves the ‘Miller Lite’ approach to asylum by Garland and Mayorkas, as well as Harris’s latest tone-deaf ‘victim shaming.’” Keeps him (as well as human smugglers) in business! Reaper Image: Hernan Fednan, Creative Commons License

https://edition.pagesuite.com/popovers/dynamic_article_popover.aspx?guid=25ce5cef-76d6-4701-9193-3d887d407397&v=sdk

Marcos Aleman reports or AP in the LA Times:

SAN MIGUEL, El Salvador — Rejected by her family, Zashy Zuley del Cid Velásquez fled her coastal village in 2014, the first of a series of forced displacements across El Salvador. She had hoped that in the larger city of San Miguel she could live as a transgender woman without discrimination and violence, but there she was threatened by a gang.

She moved away from San Miguel, then back again in a series of forced moves until the 27-year-old was shot to death April 25, sending shock waves through the close-knit LGBTQ community in San Miguel, the largest city in eastern El Salvador.

“Zashy was desperate; her family didn’t want her … and the gangsters had threatened her,” said Venus Nolasco, director of the San Miguel LGBTQ collective Pearls of the East. “She knew they were going to kill her. She wanted to flee the country, go to the United States, but they killed her with a shot through her lung.”

One day after Del Cid’s slaying, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris identified anti-LGBTQ violence in Central America as one of the root causes of migration in the region during a virtual meeting with the president of neighboring Guatemala, Alejandro Giammattei. She is visiting Guatemala and Mexico this week.

Transgender migrants were present in the Central American caravans that attempted to reach the United States border in recent years, fleeing harassment, gang extortion, violence and police indifference to crimes against them. Even in those large migrant movements, they say they faced harassment.

Things had been rough during Del Cid’s first stint in San Miguel. She had been living in a neighborhood where, as in many parts of the country, the MS-13 gang was the ultimate local authority. Gang members began to harass her, then brutally beat her, breaking her arm in 2015, Nolasco said.

“They warned her to leave, but she didn’t listen,” Nolasco said.

Del Cid moved in with Nolasco in the same neighborhood. One day, the gang grabbed Del Cid again.

“They took her, they wanted to kill her,” Nolasco said. “I begged them not to kill her, to let her go and she would leave the neighborhood.”

Del Cid moved back to her hometown, but her family rejected her again. She tried to please them, but she couldn’t, Nolasco said. Del Cid joined a church, got a girlfriend and had a baby girl, but could not maintain that life, she said.

She returned to San Miguel, where initially things seemed to go better. In 2020, Del Cid received humanitarian and housing support from COMCAVIS TRANS, a national LGBTQ rights organization, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Del Cid rented a home and opened a beauty salon there. She hired another woman to help her and was participating in an entrepreneurship program. She was preparing a business proposal to move the salon into its own space.

But Del Cid was shot in the back walking alone at night down the street. Passersby tried to help her and took her to a hospital, where she died. So far, police have made no arrests, and Nolasco believes that like other hate crimes in the country, “it will be forgotten; they’re not interested in what happens to us.”

Laura Almirall, UNHCR representative in El Salvador, said Del Cid’s killing frightened her community and saddened everyone who knew her.

“She was excited about her new plans and her new life. And unfortunately and tragically, everything came to an end,” she said.

Nolasco said that in San Miguel, some 70 miles east of the capital, the transgender community endures constant harassment from intolerant residents and gangs. They have rocks thrown at them, are beaten and are victims of extortion. If they go to police to make a report, they are insulted and demeaned. “Don’t come here to claim rights, because there are no rights for you,” police tell them, Nolasco said.

. . . .

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Read the rest of the article at the link.

Despite some legal nonsense from EOIR and sometimes from uninformed Circuit Judges who have never represented asylum seekers and know little of actual conditions in the Northern Triangle, neither El Salvador nor the other Northern Triangle governments are “willing and able” to protect most individuals suffering gender-based and other forms of persecution. Decisions claiming otherwise are, in most cases, legally wrong and disingenuous to boot.

The U.S. asylum system needs expert Asylum Officers at DHS and progressive expert Immigration Judges at EOIR. Babbling (misleadingly) about “sealed borders” won’t take the place of telling Garland and Mayorkas to stop screwing around, bring in progressive experts, and fix the U.S. asylum system before more die! V.P. Harris could have taken the first necessary step toward “fixing the Southern Border” without even leaving DC.

How are we going to promote the rule of law in other nations when we ourselves are unwilling to exhibit honesty and follow the law with respect to the most vulnerable in the world seeking legal refuge at our borders?

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

06-09-21

PODCAST “REVEALS” DUE PROCESS DISASTER IN IMMIGRATION COURTS, PARTICULARLY FOR TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS — Deep Seated Problems Existed — This Administration Made Them Worse!

https://www.revealnews.org/episodes/trans-national-migration/

Trans National Migration

Co-produced with

Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Stitcher Spotify RadioPublic RSS

We examine the record of one of the toughest immigration judges in the country, including the surprising way her decisions benefited transgender asylum-seekers. Then we follow one transgender woman who flees El Salvador for the United States to try to claim asylum.

Our final story takes us to Turkey, and focuses on a small but growing group of refugees seeking a new life: young Afghan women fleeing abuse, forced marriage and persecution in their homeland. Reporter Fariba Nawa tells the story of Hoor, who made the dangerous journey into Turkey alone, only to be assaulted by an Afghan man in Istanbul. Against all odds, Hoor sought justice for her abuser and ultimately prevailed.

Credits

Our first story about an immigration judge who ruled on hundreds of cases involving transgender asylum seekers was reported and produced by Patrick Michels and edited by Brett Myers.

Our second story about a transgender woman who fled El Salvador was reported by Alice Driver. It was produced by Casey Minor with help from Emily Harris and Amy Isackson and was edited by Brett Myers.

Our story about Afghan female migrants was reported and produced by Fariba Nawa and edited by Taki Telonidis.

Our production manager is Najib Aminy. Original score and sound design by Jim Briggs and Fernando Arruda, who had help from Kaitlin Benz and Katherine Rae Mondo.

Support for Reveal is provided by the Reva and David Logan Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. And James L. Knight Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation and the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation.

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Please click the link at the top to listen.

My takeaways:

The lack of sensitivity training and proper application of the legal standards for asylum that was allowed to go on for many years in this Immigration Courtroom is appalling;
The BIA, whose job is supposed be insuring that individuals’ Due Process rights are respected and asylum law is applied in a fair and impartial manner, failed to do its job;
The qualification of individuals for asylum based on gender classifications has been well established since Matter of Tobago-Alfonso, 20 I&N Dec. 819 (BIA 1990) was published (at the direction of then-Attorney General Janet Reno) in 1994;
LGBTQ cases were well-documented, credible, and routinely granted by the U.S Immigration Judges at the Arlington Immigration Court during my tenure there;
I don’t remember ever denying a transgender case — most were either stipulated or agreed upon by the DHS Office of Chief Counsel — yet EOIR failed to institutionalize those “best practices” that would have promoted justice, consistency, and efficiency;
Immigration Judges are bound to follow not only BIA precedents, but also the precedents by the U.S. Circuit Courts in the jurisdiction where they sit — that obviously was not happening here — a clear violation of both law and ethics;
You can see the difference when an Immigration Judge does listen, properly applies the law in the generous manner dictated by the Supreme Court in INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca and the BIA in Matter of Mogharrabi, and gives the respondent “the benefit of the doubt” as set forth in the U.N. Handbook on the Refugee Convention;
The difference in people’s lives and the benefits to the U.S. when judges properly apply asylum law to protect individuals, as intended, is obvious;
Those without lawyers and those held in long-term detention are being treated unfairly and not in accordance with Due Process;
This system needs reform so that it operates independently, impartially, and under the legal standards established by law and by Article III Circuit Courts;
Immigration Judges who are biased against asylum seekers must be uniformly reversed and “outed” by a real Appellate Tribunal, not the current “go along to get along” version of the BIA;
Judges who unwilling to threat asylum applicants and other foreign nationals fairly should not be reappointed to the bench in a competitive, merit-based process;
Trump’s recent “we don’t need no stinkin’ judges for asylum cases” rhetoric is as absurd as it is ignorant, unconstitutional, and damaging to both our precious justice system and vulnerable human beings who need and are legally entitled to our protection.

Many thanks to Lawrence University Scarff Professor of Government Jason Brozek for bringing this highly relevant podcast to my attention.

I am at Lawrence University (my alma mater) in Appleton, WI for two weeks as the Scarff Family Distinguished Visiting Professor. Jason and I currently are teaching a “mini-seminar” in Kasinga/FGM/Gender-Based Asylum in the Government Department at Lawrence. This podcast is directly relevant and “breathes life” into the issues we have been discussing with the wonderfully talented and engaged students in our class.

PWS

04-07-19

WASHPOST: THE LATEST VULNERABLE GROUP TARGETED BY THE TRUMP/SESSIONS DEATH SQUADS: LGBTQ REFUGEES!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-is-sending-lgbtq-migrants-back-to-hell/2018/07/24/eb305d72-8ec3-11e8-8322-b5482bf5e0f5_story.html?utm_term=.c1e37f62bd81

From the Washington Post Editorial Board:

Trump is sending LGBTQ migrants ‘back to hell’

by Editorial BoardJuly 24 at 7:45 PM

IN THE 1990s, the United States was among the first countries to start granting sanctuary to LGBTQ refugees and asylum seekers fleeing persecution stemming from their sexual orientation or gender identity in their home countries. Now the Trump administration, intent on turning back the clock on almost every major facet of immigration policy, is increasingly complicit in their mistreatment.

As administration officials have intensified their efforts to hollow out the asylum system — narrowing eligibility criteria, creating bottlenecks for would-be asylum seekers at legal ports of entry and tearing apart families as a means of deterring future applicants — LGBTQ individuals have suffered inordinately. That is particularly true in the case of those from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, the so-called Northern Triangle countries of Central America where sexual and gender-based violence is pervasive.

There are no statistics to indicate that LGBTQ asylum seekers are refused admittance to the United States more (or less) frequently than other applicants, though the rate at which migrants of all sorts are granted asylum seems to be plummeting because of the administration’s policies. However, sending LGBTQ migrants back across the southwestern border to Mexico subjects them to heightened risks: According to the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees, two-thirds of such individuals reported that they had suffered sexual or gender-based violence in Mexico after entering that country.

In the case of those deported to their countries of origin in the Northern Triangle, their fates are often even worse. A report last year from the rights group Amnesty International said LGBTQ deportees were effectively “sent back to hell,” based on the horrific conditions from which they fled in the first place. The UNHCR reported that 88 percent of LGBTQ asylum seekers had been victims of sexual and gender-based violence in their countries of origin.

Police and other law enforcement authorities in Central America and Mexico are often indifferent, and frequently overtly hostile, to the fate of LGBTQ individuals. A 34-year-old transgender woman interviewed by Amnesty International said she had fled El Salvador after receiving threats from a police officer who lived near her; when she tried to report him, she said, “the response was that they were going to lock me and my partner up.” She finally fled to Mexico, where she was harassed and abused by officials before finally being granted refugee status.

Another Salvadoran transgender woman interviewed by Amnesty International said that after reaching the United States, she was detained for more than three months in a cell with men — “they never took account of my sexuality or that I was trans.” (Immigration and Customs Enforcement sometimes, but not always, detains transgender women in a dedicated facility whose capacity is 60 beds.)

To qualify for asylum in the United States, migrants must prove they are subject to persecution in their home countries based on specific criteria, including identification with a particular social group, and that the government is either complicit in their mistreatment or powerless to stop it. By any reasonable assessment, many or most LGBTQ asylum seekers meet those criteria.

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The qualification of LGBTQ individuals for asylum was established more than two decades ago by the BIA’s decision in Matter of Tobaso-Alfonso, 20 I&N Dec. 819 (BIA 1990, 1994).

Since then, scores of well-documented LGBTQ asylum cases have been granted by the USCIS Asylum Office and in Immigration Court. Indeed, in the Arlington Immigration Court the cases were so well-documented by the counsel for the respondents that most could be “pre-tried” between the Assistant Chief Counsel and respondent’s counsel and placed on the Immigration Court’s “short docket” for brief hearings and granting of asylum.

Like refugees fleeing domestic violence, I found these cases to involve some of the most badly abused, most deserving, most grateful, and potentially most productive refugees that I dealt with over my many decades of involvement in t he U.S. refugee and asylum systems.

Once again, the biased, racist, White Nationalism of Trump, Sessions and their cronies have taken a well-working part of the asylum system and made it problematic.

We need regime change!

PWS

07-25-18

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

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