Although U.S. law provides for the release of asylum seekers who are neither a flight risk nor a security risk, and although studies show a high rate of appearance of asylum seekers who are released, the Trump administration has resorted to draconian detention policies. The harm inflicted on traumatized asylum seekers by detention was greatly exacerbated by the policy of family separation under which at least 2,800 children were separated from their parents. Although a court declared the policy unlawful and ordered that families be reunited, many families remain separated, and there have been news reports that the administration is considering separating families once again. It is understandable that asylum seekers with very strong claims might abandon them when facing indefinite detention as well as family separation.
The third issue I would like to turn to is the lack of the right to counsel in the United States. The U.S. does not provide representation to asylum seekers, not even unaccompanied children who must appear in court alone. This drastically reduces the likelihood of presenting a successful claim, especially in light of the restrictive substantive law interpretations that I mentioned.
Unable to afford private attorneys, many asylum seekers must rely upon non-profit organizations with limited capacity, and many go without legal representation. The increased detention of asylum seekers in remote facilities has exacerbated the difficulty of obtaining counsel. Study after study has shown that the likelihood of prevailing when represented is significantly higher than it is for those who are not represented. It is as high as five and a half times. Without counsel, individuals with compelling claims for protection are thus more likely to be denied and sent back to persecution or even death.
As my fourth point, I want to wrap up a number of restrictive measures that have been implemented or are currently being implemented in U.S. law. On April 29 of this year, President Trump issued a memo calling for regulations within 90 days that would pose other serious barriers to asylum seekers. Among them is the barring of work authorization for those who entered “unlawfully”, notwithstanding the fact that U.S. law contemplates that asylum seekers might enter without legal permission. The regulations would also impose a potentially hefty fee on asylum applications. Given that asylum seekers often arrive with little or no resources and that the U.S. provides no social services whatsoever, the charging of a fee greatly undermines access to protection.
In another restrictive move, earlier this week the administration issued revised lesson plans for asylum officers that will make it more difficult for individuals to pass an initial eligibility screening that will permit them to apply for asylum. The revised plans deleted guidance instructing officers to consider trauma and cultural background when assessing credibility and, instead, added language warning of potential fraud. These new lesson plans also deleted a paragraph that instructed officers to consider that asylum seekers might not have all the evidence necessary to prove their claims immediately upon crossing the border.
I'm just going to wrap up very briefly with some other relevant developments. There are many other executive statements and policy initiatives that underscore the current U.S. administration's hostility towards asylum seekers and its clear intent to shut down access to the U.S. protection system. The U.S. has threatened Mexico and the northern triangle countries of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala for allowing the free movement of asylum seekers, something clearly protected under international norms. It threatened to close down the U.S.-Mexico border in order to prevent asylum seekers from entering. Most recently, it put in place a policy that forces those who apply for asylum to wait in Mexico until the date of their hearings the United States.
These policies are accompanied by untrue and hateful rhetoric that characterizes desperate refugees as criminal invaders. This hostility toward asylum seekers has the great potential to bias decision-making, especially in the U.S. system where administrative adjudicators have very little judicial independence. The failure to protect bona fide refugees has been, and continues to be, the tragic result of these restrictive policies implemented in a climate of growing xenophobia.
I thank you for your time and welcome your questions.