Children are everywhere in the federal government’s improvised immigration jail in Artesia. The kids play in the attorney visitation area, they sit on their mothers’ laps during interviews with asylum officers, and in court. The little ones hear their mother’s reports of the extreme violence that forced them to flee their home countries – Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – as well as the mortal dangers they faced on their treacherous journey through Mexico.
Not surprisingly, the jailed mothers report that the children have lost weight and suffer from depression.
Incredibly, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security claims that these women and children a threat to national security. DHS categorically refuses to set bonds for the families once they pass a preliminary asylum screening. When the families then ask an immigration judge to set a bond, DHS argues for a very high bond that the refugees can’t pay.
And they are refugees. Women and children in Artesia who have received full asylum hearings since the jail opened in June have been granted asylum, belying DHS’s claim that they should be summarily deported.
Where does the national security threat claim come from? DHS lawyers rely on a discredited 2003 decision by Attorney General John Ashcroft in which he denied bond to a Haitian asylum seeker. His dubious – no, absurd – theory was that Pakistani terrorists might be hiding among Haitian refugees arriving by boat. Ashcroft relied on a post-9/11 national emergency declaration, and government lawyers now argue that this justifies the jailing of the Central American women and children who flee violence in their home countries in 2014.
After surrendering to Border Patrol agents at the border, these refugees were sent to Artesia starting in late June, when DHS converted a portion of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia into an immigration jail euphemistically called the Artesia Family Residential Center. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operates the jail, which now houses about 500 mothers and children and can hold as many as 650.
The jail’s misnaming is more than a mere inaccuracy. Because ICE, calls the detainees “residents,” they can’t be located through the national Detainee Locator System through which lawyers and families find the whereabouts of people taken into custody by ICE.
The decision to put the jail in Artesia was no accident. The biggest cities, Albuquerque and El Paso, are hundreds of miles away. So there are no immigration lawyers anywhere nearby, and DHS made no arrangements for outside groups to do know-your-rights presentations. Consequently, in the period immediately following the jail’s opening, DHS deported several hundred of the first arrivals. All told, 374 mothers and children so far have been sent back to their violence-plagued countries.
DHS didn’t try to hide the fact that the early, assembly-line deportations were intended to send a message to other Central Americans contemplating flight. “We will send you back,” DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson said in July.
The agency was able to achieve that result by adopting Alice in Wonderland rules for the asylum process: first the verdict and then the trial.
Immigration law – including the asylum process – is immensely complicated.
The government can quickly deport people who cross the border, unless they tell a Border Patrol agent they are afraid to return to their home countries. The agents are then supposed to refer those people for a “credible fear” screening interview with an asylum officer. And if the officer makes a positive finding, then the asylum seekers are referred to immigration court for a full asylum hearing. Unless ICE or an immigration judge sets a bond, the asylum seekers can be jailed by ICE through the whole process.
Border Patrol agents are required to officially note the applicant’s fear. But asylum seekers regularly say that agents routinely fail to do so. In the next step of the process, asylum officers are supposed to give applicants a fair chance to explain why they are afraid. But in Artesia, the first arrivals reported that officers acted as adversaries and ruled against them. Those denials came at a rate that was far higher than the national average. Now, a federal district judge in Albuquerque has ruled that applicants can’t appeal these denials in federal court.
In addition, ICE officers also discouraged asylum applicants from pursuing their cases. With no lawyers on hand and little media attention, this short-circuiting of the asylum process took place with no public accountability.
More recently, the American Immigration Lawyers Association has organized teams of volunteer lawyers who have come to Artesia from all over the country at great personal expense to represent the women and children. Many have continued to work on cases after their stints in Artesia.
But this valiant legal representation project is only a stop-gap measure. The Obama administration plans a massive expansion of family detention. Already, DHS has opened a jail in Karnes, TX that can hold 500. And there are plans to open a huge, 2,400-bed family jail in Dilley, TX. Both of the new jails will be operated by for-profit corporations, including Corrections Corporation of America, which operated a notorious jail in Hutto, TX that was closed in 2007 after its conditions – including dressing small children in jail uniforms – were made public.
All hearings in Artesia are by video-conference, with a judge appearing on a tiny TV screen. For the first few months, immigration judges in Arlington, Virginia were assigned to the cases. These judges – reportedly appointed by immigration court headquarters – went along with the government’s national security arguments and set high bonds, often as high as $30,000.
Beginning Sept. 28, the cases were transferred to immigration judges in Denver. Those judges have set more reasonable bonds, starting at $1,500, with many between $3,000 and $6,000, but with some inexplicably as high as $15,000. In a particularly cruel move, the government is appealing those bond decisions. Asylum officers have also begun issuing positive credible fear findings in the same kind of cases they ruled against a few months ago.
The result of fairer consideration of the cases is that some women and children are being released. This has angered the mayor of Artesia, who blames lawyers for interfering with the quick deportations that occurred before the women and children were represented. He says ICE made false promises that they would not be released from detention. ICE is trying to reassure the mayor that the town won’t be tainted by the families’ release, using the legal questionable device of keeping them jailed though they have posted bond, until they have a bus or plane ticket that will get them out of town quickly.
DHS didn’t start classes for the children until October, even then only holding classes for a few hours a day, with dedicated modular buildings yet to arrive. New Mexico children started school in August. But the state has yet to demand that the welfare of the children be protected. New Mexico’s public officials have kept quiet, and media coverage has been sporadic and limited. It’s hard for reporters to get information out of ICE, and they tend to give up.
The Artesia jail will likely be closed in the spring or summer once the huge Dilley, TX jail is fully operational. In the meantime, the U.S. government is using all its might against women and children jailed in Artesia, trying to deport them by denying them a fair chance to present their asylum claims.
(Photo by Filippo Cerulo / CC)
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