q A nother one of the really challenging Judicial impacts over the past four years is that there’s a mechanism by which Attorneys General can refer certain cases to themselves for review. And we saw particularly former Attorney General Jeff Sessions refer a number of key precedential asylum cases to himself. Basically, he didn’t like that asylum seekers were granted a lot of protection under these cases. By referring these cases to himself, he was able to rewrite the decisions and dramatically changed eligibility for asylum for hundreds of thousands of potential asylees. I would argue this had a very particular negative impact on Central American asylum seekers. q Two policies that we’ve seen over the course of the past four years have been particularly horrendous. One is the Migrant “Protection” Protocols. I put the word “protection” in quotation marks because, in my opinion, this is more accurately described as the Migrant Persecution Protocols. It is what has been known as Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. As you all now know, an individual has the right under law to come to the United States and apply for asylum. But under this so-called Migrant “Protection” Protocols (MPP), individuals at the border, were essentially turned back. That’s fine, they’re told: you can apply for asylum, but you have to do it on the other side of the border. You can imagine the implications of this. U.S. immigration attorneys are, by definition, on the US side of the border, so this policy limited asylum seekers’ ability to access counsel who can help defend them in their asylum claims. q We’ve seen that the defining factor in the vast majority of asylum cases is the access to counsel. So, if you’re denying immigrants their ability to access counsel on their claims, it is almost a foregone conclusion that their claims are not going to be successful. Beyond that it has forced migrants to remain in Mexico, some of them in camps and tent cities on the other side of the border. Others outside of these tent cities are forced to live in squalid and dangerous conditions in Mexico, for months and years. q A n additional policy that we saw in the past four years that has thankfully now gone defunct is the family separation policy. This was enacted back in 2017 as an intended deterrent to Central American migrants. What would happen is a parent with child would arrive at our southern border and the U.S. government would separate the parents from their children. The hope was that word of this was going to get back to Central America and that Central Americans would say: I would rather stay here and face this danger with my child next to me than seek protection in the US and have my child separated from me. Luckily, this policy has been ended, but over the life of the policy we saw more than 5500 children – some months-old babies – separated from their parents. As recently as last month, more than 620 of these parents still haven’t been reunited with their children.
But I’m ever the optimist, so let’s talk a little bit about the changes that we anticipate under the Biden administration. On his first day in office, President Biden unveiled the US Citizenship Act. The fact that he came in making immigration a front-burner issue did, I think, telegraph a very strong message.to the US populace and to the immigrant community that immigration will continue to be a priority for the Biden administration. If the U.S. Citizenship Act becomes law, it would provide protection to millions of undocumented immigrants in this country. We’ve also seen strengthening of humanitarian programs, such as protections for DREAMers and for the DACA program. As recently as Monday there was an expansion of what’s called Temporary Protected Status (TPS). As of mid-March, it will give Venezuelans who are currently in the United States the ability to live and work legally here for 18 months, with the possibility of extensions of the program. And President Biden has also signaled his intention to raise the annual refugee cap: going from 15,000 under Trump in late 2020 to a proposed cap over 60,000 per year under Biden.
I think this is one of those moments where we can celebrate the end to very detrimental, very anti-immigrant policies But we have to understand that the implications of these policies are very far reaching and will take years to undo. Some of them ultimately may not even be undoable.
I am ever the optimist and hope that under the Biden administration, the future is brighter for Central American refugees. However, it is going to take years to begin to undo the harm that has been done over the past four years. And, some of the harm will, I genuinely believe, be irreparable.
The end of the Migrant Protection Protocals program means immigrants who were enrolled in the MPP program are beginning to be processed into the United States as of about the 19th of February. This is going to have a very real impact on our communities here on Long Island because what this has done is created a group of approximately 25,000 immigrants who have been kept on the Mexican side of our southern border for months and even years. And now we’re having all 25,000 people processed in the United States over the course of the next few months.
I am hopeful that, little by little, we will get back to an immigration system that views immigrants as humans and values their economic and social contributions to our country. But again, this is so much more than just an immigration issue. This is an issue of politics. The elephant in the room is that this has become the core political issue in our country over the course of the past five years. And as long as it continues to be something that polarizes us as a country, it’s going to be difficult to be able to reach any sort of system that can bring us back to where it is that we want to be as a nation.
Elise de Castillo is Executive Director of the Central American Refugee Center (CARECEN). She holds a law degree from the Maurice A. Deane School of Law at Hofstra University, where she was a Dwight L. Greene Scholar and a post-graduate fellow at the Hofstra Asylum Clinic. Her interviews with migrant children were published by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugee’s report: “Children on the Run”. REGIONAL LABOR REVIEW, vol. 23, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2021). © 2021 Center for the Study of Labor and Democracy, Hofstra University.
The process is very disorganized and it’s really hard for us to gauge its effect. But looking at past immigration patterns, what we on Long Island anticipate is that over the next few weeks or months we could be seeing anywhere between 3,000 and 5,000 of these MPP arrivals coming to our communities. Think about the impact that has, and not just on the legal services community. These are immigrants coming with very real needs for food, for housing, for medical care and with a very particular set of needs around mental health services, and so this is something that our communities here are already starting to strategize around because we want to be able to proactively respond to the specific needs of MPP arrivals. And finally, the Biden administration is taking a very comprehensive look at the policies and practices that have been implemented over the course of the past four years. It just decided to stop pursuing litigation on the public charge rule. This is just one of many policies and practices that this administration is hopefully going to reverse, so we can return to a more humane immigration system, something that returns us to where we were prior to 2017, and hopefully improves upon it.
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