The accumulation of files before the American migration justice reaches such levels that it encourages, in the eyes of the authorities, the asylum seekers to struggle to enter the United States in the hope of working for years without being deported.
The approximately 650 immigration judges are backlogged by more than 2.4 million cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) organization at Syracuse University, based in New York state.
“We’re dealing with a truly frightening volume,” David Neal, director of the Department of Justice’s immigration review services, recently told a symposium hosted by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a Washington-based think tank.
Last year, 313,000 files were completed, but the Department of Homeland Security presented 700,000 new ones, “double what we had been able to close”, he said.
Asylum seekers, who represent 40% of the courts’ workload, wait an average of four years before getting their first hearing, according to the MPI. And much longer for the procedure to be completed.
A period during which they can work in the country, save and send money to their families.
“It is clear that the current slow legal migration process has become a major push factor fueling immigration to the region,” Blas Nunez-Neto, a border and migration policy official with the Department of Homeland Security, said at the symposium.
Candidates for entry into the United States, many from Latin America, sometimes pay up to $15,000 to smugglers to reach the border.
And they do it, according to Blas Nunez-Neto, because “once they are in the migration justice system and have filed the required documents, they are eligible for a work permit”.
According to him, “the legal system has basically become a legal bypass for people to come to the United States”.
Most of the migrants were once Mexicans and rarely asked for asylum. But they now mainly come from other countries and many “seek protection, although relatively few ultimately obtain it”, assured the official.
In a new report, the MPI offers ways to modernize migration legislation, which has not changed for 36 years, in order to decongest the courts: close cases that do not meet the required criteria, encourage the use of technology, restore asylum officers to manage border procedures without going through judges, and reverse priorities by deciding first on the latest cases rather than the first filed, lists Muzaffar Chishti, researcher at the Institute.
But Jojo Annobil, whose association Immigrant Justice Corps provides legal aid to migrants, does not want “a system where the last to arrive are the first out, and where people are deported without having been defended by a lawyer”.
For David Neal, of the Ministry of Justice, we must manage to be both “fair” and “efficient”.
The delays, points out Jojo Annobil, are also due to other factors, such as the constant postponements of hearings and the obligation to take the fingerprints of asylum seekers every 15 months.
The number of arrivals in the United States has fallen since May, when the administration of Joe Biden issued new rules to replace “Title 42”, a measure activated by his predecessor Donald Trump and which allowed, under the pretext of a pandemic, to immediately turn back all migrants entering the country.
In June, the American authorities thus counted 99,545 entries at the border with Mexico, or 30% less than in May.
These new rules restrict the right to asylum in practice and have been challenged in court by several civil rights associations: they provide that applicants – with the exception of unaccompanied minors – manage to obtain an appointment on a telephone application centralizing requests, “CBP One”, or to file their request in one of the countries crossed.
Without this, their request is presumed illegitimate and they may be subject to an accelerated deportation procedure, prohibiting them from entering American soil for five years.
22/07/2023 22:43:28 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
