When the Biden administration announced its plans to speed up the asylum process, the desire was understandable. In 2022, there were 1.6 million asylum claims awaiting adjudication, and that’s untenable. Under the new plan, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will conduct screening interviews with asylum seekers within 72 hours of crossing the border. That would be a drastic change from the average of four weeks that it previously took, and immigration lawyers and advocates are concerned about how that timeline will affect the process.
The Biden Administration made the provision that asylum seekers will be able to contact legal services providers, which is a positive development. Without lawyers, asylum seekers are far more likely to be denied. The specific needs of the legal system are often at odds with the way asylum seekers tell their stories, and if they can’t—or don’t know that they should—tell their story in a specific way that focuses on the nature of the threat that they face, they can be denied, even when the threat is very real. If they don’t speak English, the complications multiply. Representation makes it more likely that the process won’t simply railroad asylum seekers.
Still, allowing legal service providers is a vague assurance that has concerned advocates looking for answers. It is not year clear who those legal services providers will be or how asylum seekers will contact them. The hearings will take place telephonically, which raises more concerns. Translation over the phone can be complicated by both dialects and ratty phone connections, and many body language clues that a lawyer or judge might pick up on in an in-person hearing will be missed over the phone. Many of the incidents that prompted asylum seekers to flee are traumatic, and culture-based norms often make some detainees reluctant to tell their stories, even when their future depends on it. Without experienced, prepared legal representation and in-person hearings, doubts about how just their justice will be linger.
“It matters where the interviews are held,” according to Priscilla Orta, supervising attorney for the South Texas-based Lawyers for Good Government’s Project Corazon. “First, for attorney access. Second, for safety and space concerns.” Asylum seekers are housed in border detention facilities run by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which has historically been resistant to allowing lawyers in.
In the past, 77 percent of asylum seekers passed the initial credible fear hearings, and the concern is that this number will go down not because the threats are less credible but because 72 hours is too short a time to adequately prepare detainees for such a consequential hearing.
Right now, these new processes including the 72-hour timeline are being test-driven with the goal being to work out the kinks before Title 42 orders end on May 11. The controversial public health-related measure made the concern about the spread of COVID-19 a reason—or perhaps a pretext—for the Trump administration to stop allowing immigrants to cross the southern border. The Biden administration didn’t announce the lifting of the order until February 2023, and USCIS and CBP expect a deluge of asylum seekers when Title 42 ends and want to be ready.
The desire to expedite the asylum process is an honorable one. Asylum seekers don’t want a prolonged legal limbo either, but in a country that aspires to justice, we can’t sacrifice theirs to clear a backlog.
Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash.
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