There’s a scene in the iconic 1994 movie Clerks where Dante Hicks says to his friend and fellow slacker Randall Graves: “You hate people!” Randall responds, “Yes, but I love social gatherings–isn’t it ironic?” This is basically the opposite of my feelings towards the Asylum Office. The people are (mostly) great, but the organization is a disaster. Interviews are routinely delayed for years on end, decisions are delayed for months or years after that. The Asylum Offices rarely give sufficient notice before the interview, so there is little time to prepare, and the interviews themselves are often inefficient and interminably long.
In a recent post, I discussed Faiza W. Sayed’s bold ideas for reforming the Asylum Office and reducing the backlog (which currently stands at well over 1.3 million cases). But the more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the Asylum Office cannot be saved. It should be eliminated. (more…)
The Department of Homeland Security (the prosecutor in Immigration Court) has been implementing new rules related to its “enforcement priorities.” These rules apply to people who have cases pending in Immigration Court, meaning that the U.S. government is trying to deport them. Not surprisingly, the government wants to deport some people more than others. Under the new rules, cases that are not a priority for removal may be dismissed as a matter of prosecutorial discretion or PD. When that happens, the government has stopped the removal/deportation process and the noncitizen is able to remain in the United States.
Here, we’ll talk about who might qualify for PD, the different types of PD, and how to request PD from DHS. (more…)
The Trump Administration’s onslaught of anti-immigrant rule-making, combined with increased enforcement, pushed the Immigration Court backlog to new heights–there are currently more than 1.3 million noncitizens in removal proceedings.
When Joe Biden came into office, we were hoping his Administration would move quickly to un-do the damage caused by his predecessor, and to issue new, badly-needed administrative (and hopefully legislative) changes. To be fair, there have been some changes, especially to the more high-profile Trump-era policies such as the Muslim travel ban and the Migrant Protection Protocols. Progress in other areas has been slower, but now–after more than four months of deliberation–we have a new DHS memo on prosecutorial discretion.
The purpose of the memo is to guide DHS/ICE attorneys (the prosecutors in Immigration Court) about their enforcement priorities, i.e., who should and should not be a priority for deportation. The ability of prosecutors to make these decisions is important, since there are not enough resources to deport everyone, and DHS needs to decide where to focus its efforts. The new memo sets forth how DHS attorneys should exercise their “prosecutorial discretion” or “PD.”
President Joe Biden sent the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 to Congress on January 20, his first day in office. This bill provides a roadmap to citizenship for undocumented individuals, prioritizes family reunification, addresses the root causes of migration from Central America, modernizes border security, and aims to reduce the Immigration Court backlog.
But even if the U.S. Citizenship Act becomes law (which seems increasingly unlikely), it does not address the backlog of over 373,000 affirmative asylum cases–these are mostly individuals who entered the United States legally with visas, and who then applied for asylum. They include democracy and human rights advocates, journalists, religious minorities, and members of the LGBT community, among others. Many in the backlog are torture survivors and others who have suffered severe persecution. Since one case sometimes contains several family members, the total number of people waiting in the affirmative asylum backlog is something like 600,000 individuals. Many of those in the backlog have already been waiting four, five or even six years for an interview. These individuals represent a “Hidden Asylum Crisis” because their suffering is invisible to the general public and has thus far been ignored by lawmakers.(more…)
As you may have noticed, it’s 2020. I don’t have high hopes that this year will be any better than the last, at least in terms of immigration and asylum, but I do have some predictions for what to expect in the coming annum. While I am no Joan Quigley, I do expect that at least some of my prognostications will come true. If so, remember, you heard it here first. And now, without further ado, here are ten predictions for 2020–
1. All asylum grant letters will now feature a photo of Donald Trump giving you the finger.
2. Every 36 hours, USCIS will issue an updated version of form I-589. The new form will be exactly the same as the old form, except for the edition date. Old versions of the form will not be accepted.
In 2020, DHS will adopt a new logo, which more accurately reflects its current mission.
3. Having re-written The New Collosus, Ken Cuccinelli will set to work on other popular pieces of Americana: America, the Beautiful will be changed to America the Brutal Is Full. Hail to the Chief becomes Sieg Heil to the Chief. And My Country Tis of Thee will become My country, Muslim free, Sweet land for whites only, Of thee I sing.
4. The Board of Immigration Appeals will be replaced by the 1985 Chicago Bears defense.
5. The abbreviation EAD will be changed from “Employment Authorization Document” to “Employment Americans Detest.” The new EAD will only allow non-citizens to work in jobs that Americans won’t do, such as picking watermelons, washing old people, and serving in the Trump Administration.
6. The Correction Corporation of America will issue a new child-friendly cage. Each cage will be equipped with a tin cup for drinking, a week’s supply of gruel, and a doll to play with–Oliver for boys and Annie for girls.
7. To better track aliens in the U.S., the Trump Administration will require all non-citizens to tattoo their A-number to their forearm.
8. Continuing a trend from last year, in 2020, I-589 forms will be rejected unless all boxes are filled. If there is no answer to a question, you must write “n/a”. If “n/a” is not written correctly, the form will be rejected. Incorrect versions of “n/a” include “N/a”, “n\a”, “NA”, and “n/a”.
9. The wait time for an asylum-pending EAD will be increased to one year. After sending the receipt, biometric letter, and approval letter to your correct address, USCIS will mail the card to the wrong address. After it is returned by the post office, you can re-file and start the process over again.
10. In 2020, the fee for asylum will be $50.00. But fear not. For those who do not have the money, the new form I-666 allows USCIS to harvest your organs in lieu of payment. You really didn’t need that extra kidney anyway, did you?
So that’s it. As you can see, it looks like 2020 is shaping up to be a banner year for immigrants and for us all. On the bright side, it’s already January 7th. That means we only have 359 days left to go…
On April 26, the Department of Homeland Security launched its new Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) office. According to DHS, VOICE will “assist victims of crimes committed by criminal aliens.” DHS Secretary John Kelly said in a statement, “All crime is terrible, but these victims are unique—and too often ignored. They are casualties of crimes that should never have taken place—because the people who victimized them often times should not have been in the country in the first place.” I suppose the same might be said of crimes committed by children born of unplanned pregnancies, but I digress.
Don’t mess with these ladies, especially if they haven’t had their nap.
The fact is, most credible reports show that immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than U.S. citizens. But never mind that. Today, I am concerned with another group whose below-average crime rate masks its otherwise sinister nature. You guessed it, I’m talking about America’s grandmothers.
To shed light on this menace, I’ve decided to create a new website called VOGUE – Victims Of Grandmothers’ Unscrupulous Ethics. The website will track crimes committed by mommoms, babas, memoms, geemas, and savtas throughout our great country. And I’m not just talking about the Little Old Lady from Pasadena, though her reckless driving certainly terrified everyone on Colorado Boulevard. Rather, I want the public to know that America’s bubbies are a real threat to our society. So in the spirit of disproving statistics with anecdotes, I present to you the Top 5 nana-related crimes of recent memory. Be afraid. Be very afraid:
(1) In 2010, a 64-year old Long Island woman was arrested for stealing boxes of jello, replacing the contents with sand and salt, and then returning the boxes for a full refund (of $1.40 each!). According to authorities, Christine Clement disposed of the evidence by cooking up and eating the contents of the boxes she had emptied. Ms. Clement’s husband of 40 years served as her get-away driver.
(2) Griselda Blanco was a drug lord (drug lady?) from Colombia who relocated to Miami where she dominated the violent cocaine-trafficking scene in the 1970s and 1980s. She was supposedly responsible for over 200 murders, including the murder of at least one of her husbands. Ms. Blanco was finally deported to Colombia where she was assassinated at a butcher shop in 2012. Catherine Zeta-Jones is slated to play her in an upcoming movie called The Godmother (fittingly, Ms. Blanco’s youngest son is named Michael Corleone Blanco).
(3) Velma Barfield, also known as “Death Row Granny,” used arsenic as her weapon of choice. She confessed to killing four people, including her mother and a boyfriend. It seems likely she also killed at least one of her two husbands. In 1984, she became the first woman executed by lethal injection and the first woman in the United States executed since 1962.
(4) Another killer who preferred poison was Nannie Doss, known as the “Giggling Granny.” All together, she killed four husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson, and a mother-in-law. The first murders took place in the late 1920’s and the last occurred in 1953, when she killed her fifth husband by poisoning his sweet-potato pie (given my own feelings about sweet potatos, I am unlikely to die this way).
(5) Career criminal Doris Payne has been a jewel thief for more than six decades. Her most famous theft involved a $500,000.00, 10-carat diamond ring, which she stole from a jewelry store in Monte Carlo in the 1970’s. More recently, in 2015, she allegedly stole another diamond ring valued at $33,000.00 from a store in North Carolina (at age 84!). Her modus operandi is to pretend to be a well-to-do person looking to buy jewelry. She has the clerk take out various pieces, and then somehow causes the clerk to lose track of a piece or two, which she carries away.
So as you can see, America’s grannies are a notorious bunch. Whether they’re clandestinely replacing our jello with sand, murdering rival drug lords and annoying husbands, or walking away with large diamonds, they clearly represent a danger to us all. But hopefully, VOGUE will help. By shining a light on a few bad (Granny Smith) apples, we’ll soon have you convinced that the whole barrel is spoiled. At least that’s what they tell me at DHS.
Following the December 2, 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, where the husband-and-wife perpetrators had purportedly become radicalized via the internet, Congress requested that the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) take steps to better investigate the social media accounts of immigrant applicants (the husband was an American-born U.S. citizen of Pakistani decent; his wife was a lawful permanent resident from Pakistan). In response, DHS established a task force and several pilot programs to expand social media screening of people seeking immigration benefits and U.S. visas. DHS also approved creation of a Social Media Center of Excellence, which would conduct social media background checks for the various DHS departments. The Center of Excellence would “set standards for social media use in relevant DHS operations while ensuring privacy and civil rights and civil liberties protections.”
The director of the Center of Excellence, Bill S. Preston, Esquire.
Last month, the DHS Office of Inspector General released a (clumsily) redacted report detailing the efficacy of DHS’s efforts and making suggestions. Due to the incomplete redaction job, it seems likely that the pilot program focused on refugees and perhaps asylum seekers, but the plan is to expand the program to cover all types of immigration benefits.
The goal of the pilot program was to help develop policies and processes for the standardized use of social media department-wide. “USCIS had previously used social media in a limited capacity, but had no experience using it as a large-scale screening tool.” The pilot program relied on manual and automated searches of social media accounts to “determine whether useful information for adjudicating refugee applications could be obtained.” It seems that the ability of DHS to investigate social media accounts was limited by technology: At the time the pilot program was launched in 2016, “neither the private sector nor the U.S. Government possessed the capabilities for large-scale social media screening.”
In one portion of the pilot program, applicants were asked to “voluntarily” give their social media user names. USCIS then “assessed identified accounts to determine whether the refugees were linked to derogatory social media information that could impact their eligibility for immigration benefits or admissibility into the United States.”
DHS has also been looking into social media, email, and other computer files of people entering or leaving the United States, including U.S. citizens, and this inquiry is far from voluntary. There have been numerous recent reports of DHS Customs and Border Protection (“CBP”) agents demanding passwords for cell phones and computers. The number of people subject to such searches increased significantly at the end of the Obama Administration, and seems to be further increasing under President Trump. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the large majority of people targeted for these searches are Muslim.
All this means that DHS may be looking at your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. to determine whether you pose a threat and (possibly) to assess your credibility. They might also gain access to your email and other information stored on your computer or your cell phone. This data could then be used to evaluate your eligibility for immigration benefits, including asylum.
On the one hand, it seems reasonable that DHS would want to look into social media and other on-line material. After all, it is well-known that terrorists rely on the internet to spread their messages, and as DHS notes, “As the threat landscape changes, so does CBP.” Also, most immigration benefits are discretionary, meaning that even if you qualify for them, the U.S. government can deny them in the exercise of discretion. Therefore, if DHS “requests” certain information as part of the application process, and the applicant fails to provide it, DHS can deny the benefit as a matter of discretion.
On the other hand, the inter-connectivity of the on-line world could yield evidence of relationships that do not actually exists. For example, one study estimates that Facebook users (all 1.6 billion of them) are connected to each other by 3.57 degrees of separation. That means there are–on average–only 3.57 people between you and Osama bin Laden (assuming he still maintains his Facebook page). But of course, it is worse than that, since there are many terrorist suspects on Facebook, not just one (Osama bin Laden). So if you are from a terrorist-producing country, it’s likely that suspected terrorists are separated from you by less than 3.57 degrees of separation. Presumably, DHS would take these metrics into account when reviewing on-line data, but you can see the problem–your on-line profile may indicate you have a relationship with someone with whom you have no relationship at all.
So what can you do to protect yourself?
First, don’t be paranoid. It’s nothing new for DHS or other government agencies to search your on-line profile. Since everything posted on-line is, at least in a sense, public, you should be discrete about what you post, and you should be aware that anyone–including the U.S. government–could be reading it.
What’s more problematic is when CBP seizes electronic devices at the border and then reviews emails and other confidential information. This is extremely intrusive and an invasion of privacy. There is also an argument that it violates the Fourth Amendment right to be free of unlawful searches, but generally, people coming and gong from the U.S. have less protection than people in the interior (though I imagine that as CBP steps up the practice, we will see lawsuits that further define Fourth Amendment rights at the border). Knowing that you could be subject to such a search at least enables you to prepare yourself. Don’t travel with devices if you don’t want them searched. Be careful what you store on your devices and in the cloud.
Also, if you think you have problematic on-line relationships or derogatory on-line information, be prepared to explain yourself and present evidence if the issue comes up.
On-line information can affect an asylum or immigration case in more subtle ways. For example, if you state in your application that you attended a protest on a particular date, make sure you got the date correct–DHS may be able to find out the date of the protest, and if your account of events does not match the on-line information, it could affect your credibility. The same is true for more personal information. For instance, if your asylum application indicates you attended high school from 1984 to 1987, that should match any available information on the internet. Mostly, this simply requires that you take care to accurately complete your immigration forms, so that there are no inconsistencies with data available on-line.
Again, it’s not really news that DHS is reviewing social media and other on-line information. It does appear that such practices will become more common, but as long as applicants are aware of what is happening, they can prepare for it.
