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This newsletter is for people
interested in protecting asylum
-seekers and refugees in the United
States. HRF has been advocating
for refugees for two decades, and
helping thousands to obtain asylum
in the United States.Latest Issues
#64
April, 2008
Book Details Struggles in U.S. Asylum System
The Attorney General issued a sweeping “precedent decision”
on April 17 which portrays Haitian asylum seekers arriving by sea
as threats to national security and effectively directs immigration
judges to indefinitely detain these Haitians.
"This is not a decision which is concerned so much with protecting
our security as it is concerned with sending a message to the Haitians
themselves," said Eleanor Acer, Director of the Asylum Program
at Human Rights First. "The thinly veiled message behind
this order reads: 'go home Haitians. You are not wanted here.'"
As a result of the Attorney General’s decision, Haitian men,
women and children – who have no intent to harm the United
States – will be detained in jails or other facilities for
months or years without being given a meaningful chance to demonstrate
that their detention is unnecessary.
“In essence the Attorney General – invoking the term
' national security ' – is depriving asylum seekers of the
chance to prove that they, in their individual cases, present no
security risk and merit release on bond. Jailing asylum seekers
for months or longer and depriving them of the chance to show, in
their individual cases, that they present no risk and merit release,
is unfair and inconsistent with both American values and international
law,” added Acer.
This is yet another action taken by the Administration which enforces
a discriminatory detention policy directed at Haitians, Human Rights First said. The decision could also have a devastating impact
on other asylum seekers and non-citizens given its overly broad
invocation of "national security" to justify the indefinite
detention of asylum seekers who mean no harm to the U.S.
In the decision (called In Re D-J-), the Attorney General refused
to release an 18-year-old Haitian asylum seeker who has been detained
since October 29, 2002, when he and about 200 other Haitian men,
women and children arrived by boat in Florida. The Attorney General's
action also vacated a decision made by the Board of Immigration
Appeals which had ruled that the young man was entitled to an individualized
determination of the need for his continued detention.
The Attorney General, in his decision, contends that releasing the
Haitian asylum seeker “or similarly situated undocumented
seagoing migrants, on bond would give rise to adverse consequences
for national security and sound immigration policy.” There
is no indication that the 18-year-old Haitian himself is any threat
to U.S. security. Instead, the Attorney General has concluded that
a surge in Haitian migration by sea would “divert valuable
Coast Guard and [Department of Defense] resources from counterterrorism
and homeland security responsibilities.” The Attorney General
also claimed that the State Department had asserted that it “has
noticed an increase in third country nations (Pakistanis, Palestinians,
etc.) using Haiti as a staging point for attempted migration to
the United States. This increases the national security interest
in curbing use of this migration route.”
The Attorney General directed that immigration judges and the Board
of Immigration Appeals (the administrative appellate board that
reviews immigration judge decisions), in future bond release proceedings,
consider government submissions claiming that national security
interests are implicated. In so doing, the Attorney General sent
a clear signal that he expects immigration judges and the Board
to refuse to release Haitian asylum seekers as well as other non-citizens
based on U.S. government assertions of broad national security concerns
– even when there is no reason to believe the individual at
issue himself presents a risk of harm to the United States.
Human Rights First is troubled by the overly broad and contorted
arguments used by the Attorney General in order to justify his invocation
of the “national security” label in this case. “Attorney
General Ashcroft essentially says that giving Haitian refugees due
process is just too distracting,” said Acer. “And anything
distracting is by definition a danger to national security. Therefore
Haitian refugees are a threat to national security. And we're likely
to have less of them if we keep them all in jail.” Acer noted
that “this decision is yet another example of how the Administration
takes measures in the name of security that cause extreme hardship
to people without making Americans safer.”
At another point in the decision, the Attorney General also argued
that the 200 Haitian asylum seekers on the October 29 boat should
be detained rather than released on bond because the U.S. government
did not have the capacity to adequately screen them. The Attorney
General stated that: “Under the current National Emergency,
the Government’s capacity to promptly undertake an exhaustive
factual investigation concerning the individual status of hundreds
of undocumented aliens is sharply limited and strained to the limit.”
While it strains credulity to believe that the U.S., which is at
this very moment conducting security checks on many other non-citizens,
cannot handle screening 200 Haitian men, women and children, it
is also significant that nowhere does the Attorney General address
the substantial cost of detaining the Haitians for prolonged periods
– or the amount of money that could be better spent on directly
protecting national security if adequate resources were devoted
to promptly and thoroughly screening the Haitians, so that they
could be released from detention rather than jailed at substantial
government expense for months or years.
Human Rights First urges Attorney General Ashcroft to
revoke this decision and end discriminatory detention policies targeted
at Haitian Refugees.
