IMMIGRATION POLICY
What Next for Central American Refugees? Undoing the Trump Administration Legacy By Elise de Castillo
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think that in times like these, it’s so important to make sure we have a lot of people at the table and different voices in the immigration conversation. So it’s really encouraging to me as an immigrant advocate to see so many people who are interested today in a topic that is so relevant and fundamentally important for the future of our country.
Anyone practicing immigration law over the past four years has been living in a constant state of heightened anxiety, dealing with whiplash from all of the changes in policy, law and rules that have come down from the federal level, and the ensuing litigation that has paused those changes. As difficult as it has been for us as immigration practitioners it’s even more difficult for the clients that we serve. The Central American refugees who we represent are fleeing very real danger, violence and hardship in their countries. They are coming to this country to seek protection, as is their right under both US and international law, and for the past four years they have seen the doors to that protection summarily shut in their faces. So it has been very, very challenging for our community.
I’m Executive Director of CARECEN, the Central American Refugee Center on Long Island. For nearly 40 years, CARECEN has provided direct legal services, community education and advocacy to immigrants between our two offices in Hempstead and Brentwood. As our name indicates, our roots are very much in helping Central American refugees who are fleeing the region after civil wars in the northern triangle back in the 1980s. We’re still around to tell the tale, because we have been able to adapt our organization to the ever-changing needs of Long Island’s immigrant community.
One of the questions we often get asked is: “Well, why are you looking specifically at Central American refugees?” The answer is that, although Long Island’s immigrant community is very diverse in terms of the countries from which immigrants come, on Long Island the highest number of immigrants come from El Salvador and the other Central American countries are not far behind. So in terms of our local community, when we talk about refugees what we’re primarily talking about is folks from Central America.
We have clients from over 70 countries worldwide, but over the past seven years or so we really returned to our roots in that a large portion of our legal services are focused on representation for Central American refugees -- primarily children and adults with children who are fleeing Central America. That’s what I’m going to focus on today: what do current refugee issues look like in the context of our Long Island communities? And a big part of that is undoing the Trump Administration’s immigration legacy.
There’s a very key distinction that we need to make at the outset, between refugees and asylum seekers. Even if we sometimes use
these terms somewhat interchangeably, understand that there is a distinction – largely procedural – between the two.
had made that decision. She said that her mother realized that the trip to the United States is very dangerous, and that I faced a very high risk of being raped. She wanted to protect her daughter.
Refugees are individuals who apply for refugee status abroad, are granted protection while they are abroad, and enter the U.S. as refugees. The cap on the maximum number of refugees that can enter the United States in any given year is set by the President. There has been a big shift in refugee caps, over the course of the past 10 years or so, with numbers that averaged about 76,000 per year over the course of the Obama Administration. Trump cut that all the way down to 15,000 in October of last year. Now President Biden is looking to bring it back up. Asylum is granted while the person is inside the United States. Asylum status is granted either by an immigration judge or an asylum officer, depending on how it is that the person applied. Unlike refugees, there is no annual cap for asylees.
I’m talking about this almost a decade later, yet there are goosebumps all over my body, as I remember this moment. I think that any of us can put ourselves in the shoes of that mother and stop and think about what it would take for us to put our 15- yearold daughter in a position where we feel that she is likely to be raped. To me, it was very clear that this mother realized that the danger that that girl faced by remaining in El Salvador was greater than the danger of being raped. Again, not every Central American immigrant has the same story, but I think that the story of this young woman is very indicative of many of the stories that we hear on a daily basis, of the very real dangers that Central American immigrants do face and what motivates them to come to the United States. They’re looking for protection -- as this is their right under international and domestic law.
What does it take to become an asylee or refugee? The bar is extremely high – you don’t just come to United States and say: “I don’t want to go back to my country,” or “I’m afraid of returning to my country because it’s dangerous.” It’s actually very difficult to be granted either refugee or asylee status. Fundamentally, what a refugee or asylee has to prove in order to be granted their status is the same. And that is that a person has to show a well-founded fear of persecution based on one of five protected grounds which are: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.
So, how did protections for refugees and asylum seekers change under the Trump administration? It’s not going to be a surprise to anyone to hear me say there was what can only be described as a systematic dismantling of the refugee and asylum systems. Given space constraints, I’m going to go through these really quickly. We could spend an entire week talking about all of this, but I’m going to give you what I think was referred to earlier as bites of the whole enchilada.
And what does this look like for the folks that we work with here and, more specifically, who are Central American refugees? The Central American refugees, with whom we work are largely families or children fleeing El Salvador Guatemala and Honduras, countries which are havens for gangs and violence. There is no immigrant monolith here – not all immigrant stories are the same, not all asylees and refugees are fleeing the same types of persecution. But I think that we can paint with a somewhat broad brush the scenario of folks from Central America. Because the experiences of many immigrants fleeing the northern triangle countries are very similar in terms of the dangers that they face, primarily from gang violence in their countries.
q There was a reduction in the number of refugee admissions to the U.S. – as I mentioned, in October of last year, Trump set the refugee cap at 15,000. This was a sharp decrease of tens of thousands from his predecessor. And the Trump administration created new procedural complications which slowed down and moved resources away from the refugee system, which made it more difficult for individuals abroad to access the system. q We also experienced a whole bevy of changes to policies, rules and practice which made applying for asylum and establishing eligibility for asylum and refugee status more difficult than ever. The Trump administration really decimated our humanitarian immigration system with a particular focus on asylees and refugees. q I think one of the most troubling things that we’ve seen over the past four years is the impact of prejudicial judicial appointments and judicial decisions. What this means is that, although immigration law is codified, it is also shaped by judicial decisions. Trump made judicial appointments both to immigration courts and to the Board of Immigration Appeals, our appellate body, that have dramatically limited eligibility for asylum. The problem here is that judicial decisions have long reaching implications. Judicial appointments are long-term appointments, so this isn’t something where President Biden will come in and all of the Trump appointees are going to quickly leave. They’re going to be part of our immigration court system for decades to come, and will continue to shape our asylum process, even under different more pro-immigrant administration.
I so clearly remember a moment, back in 2013, when I was working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees as a consultant interviewing Central American children who had been detained by the U.S. government at the border and were in shelters in the United States waiting to be released to sponsors in the United States. We were trying to learn more about the push pull-factors – that is what motivates Central American immigrants, particularly Central American children to come to the United States.
Elise de Castillo (speaking center, in black). Photo credit: Central American Refugee Center
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I was sitting across the table from this beautiful young girl from western El Salvador who was about 15 years old. And I remember that she said to me that, before she left for the United States, her mother took her to a local clinic where she received the birth control shot. And I asked this young girl why it is that her mother 17
