Humanitarian Protection
How Should the U.S. Respond to the Syrian Refugee Crisis?
As the Syrian refugee crisis mounts, the United States is being pressured both internally and externally to take in more of the nearly 4 million refugees that have been displaced due to ongoing conflict in Syria. To date, the United States. has taken in 1,500, or less than 0.03… Read More
New Report Evaluates Scale of the Central American Refugee Influx
The Central American refugee influx along the U.S.-Mexico border, which generated so much press attention in 2014, is not going away anytime soon. The conditions which spur Salvadorans, Guatemalans, and Hondurans to flee their countries in large numbers—namely, widespread violence and grinding poverty—have not changed. Nor has the fact that… Read More
Story of Unaccompanied Child Underscores Importance of Legal Representation Needed for All Refugee Children
Elvis Garcia is a migration counselor at the Catholic Charities Community Services of New York. He is also a former unaccompanied child who fled from his native Honduras in 2005 when he was 15 years old. Last week, Garcia and several others participated in a roundtable discussion sponsored by Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services to evaluate the response to the humanitarian situation at the southern U.S. border and highlight the recommendations regarding the treatment of children in their new report. During the roundtable, Garcia pointed to the lack of lawyers for kids as one of the biggest challenges confronting unaccompanied children. He said many children are eligible for asylum, yet lack the access to attorneys to navigate the system. Read More
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
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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