Bureaucracy as a weapon: how the Trump administration is slowing asylum cases
Source: The Guardian
Bureaucracy as a weapon: how the Trump administration is slowing asylum cases
US Citizenship and Immigration Services is returning applications over the equivalent of failing to dot an I or cross a T
by Charles Davis
Mon 23 Dec 2019 11.00 GMT
One man came to America fleeing political persecution in Cuba, only to have his application for asylum rejected because his attorney had not listed a middle name – a middle name he does not have.
Another asylum-seeker from the Democratic Republic of the Congo had their application rejected, in part, for putting a dash (“–”) in the space to list other names they have gone by – even though they have never gone by any other name.
And a child from El Salvador, who entered the country alone, dutifully listed the names of their two siblings – only to have their application rejected because the form provided space for four names and the child left the two remaining spaces blank.
Cases like these are becoming alarmingly frequent, immigration attorneys say, as the Trump administration increasingly refuses to process asylum applications for pedantic reasons. Over a half-dozen immigration attorneys across the country interviewed by the Guardian describe how the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has returned applications unprocessed over the equivalent of failing to dot an I or cross a T – a shift with potentially life-altering consequences for their vulnerable clients.
The rejection of an application by USCIS does not necessarily mean the client won’t get a chance to fix the application and send it back again. But it does force asylum seekers to begin their claim afresh, at best delaying a person’s ability to work and, at worst, jeopardizing their ability to remain in the country at all.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/23/us-immigration-trump-asylum-seekers
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