Refugees and Asylum Seekers
Evidence Shows Asylum Seekers Appear for Court with Alternatives to Detention and Legal Assistance
When thousands of Central American families fled violence to the United States last year, the Administration responded by opening family detention centers, which are detaining mothers and children as their asylum-based claims work through the court system. Family detention has since led to complaints of psychological harm, suicide attempts, protests and hunger strikes by detainees, and lawsuits over lack of due process, all at exorbitant cost. Yet a new paper by the American Immigration Council and Center for Migration Studies, A Humane Approach Can Work: The Effectiveness of Alternatives to Detention for Asylum Seekers, suggests that U.S. detention of asylum seekers is not only harmful, but unnecessary. Read More
Measuring Protections for LGBT Immigrants
25 years ago, the Board of Immigration Appeals held that people fleeing persecution based on their sexual orientation are eligible for asylum. Just months later, President George H.W. Bush lifted a ban which excluded lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) immigrants from entering the country. A recent report by… Read More
Reports: Detention Doesn’t Deter Migrants and Refugees From Coming to United States
In 2009, the Obama Administration ended family detention at the infamous T. Don Hutto jail in Texas and cut the number of immigrants in family detention to less than a hundred. However, after the surge of Central American migrants last summer, the Administration reinstituted the appalling practice of family… Read More
What Is Driving Children to Leave Central America?
The children who leave behind their homes in Central America and Mexico and undergo the dangerous and sometime fatal journey into the United States are not doing so on a whim. Most are fleeing conditions that are life threatening: violence committed by gangs that act with impunity, violence committed within… Read More
Unrepresented Children Still Being Fast-Tracked Through Immigration Hearings
Since the government began “prioritizing” the deportation of unaccompanied children and mothers with children last summer, legal service providers and other court observers across the country have reported that immigration judges are giving children less time to find attorneys before moving forward in their cases. Now, children without attorneys… Read More
Top Five Immigration Stories of 2014
This year, the narrative on immigration swung from hope that the House of Representatives would follow the Senate’s lead and act on comprehensive immigration reform legislation to hopelessness when Republican leaders refused to act. Then attention turned to anticipation of the President’s announcement of temporary executive actions to… Read More
State Department Launches In-Country Refugee Program to Reunite Central American Families
Last week, the U.S. Department of State announced the launch of its in-country refugee processing program in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The program is part of the Obama Administration’s response to last summer’s influx of unaccompanied children and families fleeing to the United States from Central America and… Read More
Civil Rights Complaint Documents Government’s Failure to Properly Screen Asylum Seekers
In a strong condemnation of Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) treatment of refugees, several organizations submitted a complaint to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (OCRCL) detailing the pervasive failure of CBP officers to properly screen individuals who fear persecution. The complaint supplements… Read More
Report Discloses Deportation of Central American Asylum Seekers
Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a report last week documenting serious flaws in the procedures used to deport noncitizens apprehended at or near the border—flaws that are resulting in the deportation of Central Americans who face serious harm in their home countries. The report is based on interviews of… Read More
Proposed Refugee Program Limited in Central American Impact
Earlier this week, President Obama issued a memo that set the refugee cap at 70,000 refugees for the 2015 fiscal year. This is the same cap as Fiscal Year 2014, but the 2015 regional allotment for Latin America and the Caribbean decreased to 4,000 from 5,000. This region includes… Read More
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