Trump sued by ACLU over asylum process
Suit says applicants are held indefinitely in violation of the law
An immigration judge twice agreed that Ansly Damus deserved refugee protection after facing political persecution and death threats in Haiti. But President Donald Trump’s administration appealed those rulings, keeping Damus, a former ethics teacher, imprisoned for more than 16 months.
Now the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have filed a federal lawsuit challenging the practice of jailing asylum-seekers with credible cases for months on end. Advocates say it is part of the government’s increased crackdown on the asylum process, which top Trump officials have criticized as rife with abuse.
“The Trump administration wants to make life so miserable for asylum-seekers that they give up and return to their home countries, even at the risk of torture or death,” said Michael Tan, an attorney with the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, in a statement Thursday. “The administration is wielding indefinite detention as a weapon to deter future asylum-seekers, which is both cruel and unconstitutional.”
The Department of Homeland Security declined comment, citing the pending litigation.
The class-action lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., on behalf of nine detained asylum-seekers from Cuba, El Salvador, Venezuela and other countries, who requested asylum at official U.S. ports of entry.
According to the suit, five Immigration and Customs Enforcement field offices, including the one in El Paso, have essentially stopped releasing asylum-seekers since early 2017.
All of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit passed a so-called credible fear interview, the initial step to receiving asylum. The protection is granted to people who have suffered persecution, or fear they will, because of their race, religion, nationality, membership in a social group or political opinion.
None had criminal histories or a record of violence.
It can take several years for asylum claims to be adjudicated in the backlogged system. Immigration courts have a record 632,000 pending cases, according to federal statistics. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes claims for those who legally entered the country, has more than 311,000 cases.
DHS policy enacted in 2009 states that asylum-seekers who don’t pose a flight risk or a danger to society should be granted humanitarian parole and released while they await the outcome of their cases.
But the ACLU charges that the administration is instead “categorically jailing them indefinitely,” violating not only its own policy, but the U.S. Constitution and international treaties governing refugees.
A New York federal district court in November found the government had wrongly issued “blanket denials” to asylumseekers in Buffalo, N.Y., and ordered that facility to review its requests for release.
The practice is a stark turnaround from previous policy. In 2013, nine out of 10 asylum-seekers in the five field offices were found to meet the government’s criteria and were released from immigration custody, according to the lawsuit. In 2017, that dropped to nearly zero. More than 1,000 asylum-seekers are estimated to have been denied release.
The Trump administration has repeatedly blamed “loopholes” for an increase in migrants seeking refuge here. In a speech in Austin in October, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the current asylum system is too easy to defraud.
Groups that support reducing immigration such as the Center for Immigration Studies say detaining asylum-seekers is necessary because many have fraudulent claims. Once they are released, they skip out on their hearings and are difficult to find, the group says.