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How Anti-Terror Laws Hurt Asylum Seekers
Terrorism definitions are so broad that DHS admitted they may even deny asylum to the Iraqi national who helped in the rescue of American soldier Jessica Lynch. Sarnata Reynolds is the Director of the Amnesty International USA Refugee Program, a member of Detention Watch Network. IMMIGRATION MATTERS regularly features the views of the nation's leading immigrant rights advocates.
A bipartisan body, the federal Commission on International Religious Freedom, which Congress asked to review asylum procedures, recently warned that Homeland Security authorities continue to treat asylum seekers harshly.
Asylum seekers were sometimes cuffed, strip-searched and jailed, the commission found. To protect people fleeing persecution the commission called for safeguards in the system of expedited removal, which authorizes border patrol to deport people quickly and without a court hearing. However, the obstacles asylum seekers confront in their search for protection extend beyond the errors of border patrol.
Indeed, anti-terrorism laws are now so broad they hurt the victims of terrorism, punish them for being the subject of abuse, and foreclose the possibility of their attaining protection in the United States.
On January 11, 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) recognized the dire consequences of these laws and agreed to provide waivers to eight discreet groups of refugees, and consider duress waivers on a case-by-case basis.
This limited concession, however, applies to a very narrow category of people and provides no remedy whatsoever to detained asylum seekers who do not fall within the waiver categories. Worse, DHS has yet to provide a procedure to apply for a waiver, so even those asylum seekers who may benefit have no way of requesting one.
Meanwhile, immigration judges are forced to refuse protection to bona fide asylum seekers, not because they are a national security threat to the U.S., but because they had some link, even if minimal and involuntary, to armed groups in their home countries.
Through swift passage of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Real ID Act of 2005, Congress overhauled and greatly expanded terrorism definitions. For the first time, victims of terrorist organizations were labeled material supporters of terrorism precisely because they were targeted, tortured and enslaved by the very groups the United States is attempting to exclude.
More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c6fdb245d8ef39eb84e885af184bae89
Asylum seekers were sometimes cuffed, strip-searched and jailed, the commission found. To protect people fleeing persecution the commission called for safeguards in the system of expedited removal, which authorizes border patrol to deport people quickly and without a court hearing. However, the obstacles asylum seekers confront in their search for protection extend beyond the errors of border patrol.
Indeed, anti-terrorism laws are now so broad they hurt the victims of terrorism, punish them for being the subject of abuse, and foreclose the possibility of their attaining protection in the United States.
On January 11, 2007, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) recognized the dire consequences of these laws and agreed to provide waivers to eight discreet groups of refugees, and consider duress waivers on a case-by-case basis.
This limited concession, however, applies to a very narrow category of people and provides no remedy whatsoever to detained asylum seekers who do not fall within the waiver categories. Worse, DHS has yet to provide a procedure to apply for a waiver, so even those asylum seekers who may benefit have no way of requesting one.
Meanwhile, immigration judges are forced to refuse protection to bona fide asylum seekers, not because they are a national security threat to the U.S., but because they had some link, even if minimal and involuntary, to armed groups in their home countries.
Through swift passage of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 and the Real ID Act of 2005, Congress overhauled and greatly expanded terrorism definitions. For the first time, victims of terrorist organizations were labeled material supporters of terrorism precisely because they were targeted, tortured and enslaved by the very groups the United States is attempting to exclude.
More
http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=c6fdb245d8ef39eb84e885af184bae89
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