Transcripts For CSPAN Discussion Focuses On Detention And Re

Tonight, cspans issue spotlight looks at police and race relations. We will show president obama at the Memorial Service for five Police Officers shot and killed in dallas. President obama when the bullets started flying, the men and women of the Dallas Police they did not flinch, and they did not react recklessly. South Carolina Republican senator tim scott during a speech on the lower about his own interactions with police. Senator scott the vast majority of the time, i was pulled over for nothing more than driving a new car in the wrong neighborhood or some other reason just as trivial. Our program also includes one family story about a family with police and washington, d. C. Most people get defensive if they feel like you are being offensive. Respectful and an encounter, and if its not a crisis or dangerous situation thoseersus demands things change the dynamic little bit. Watch our spotlight tonight. N cspan and www. Cspan. Org theres a rise in the number of Asylum Seekers held for long periods in u. S. Detention centers according to a new report. Who requestugees protection at u. S. Borders are sent to facilities that are like criminal prisons. A Panel Discussed a report at an event in washington, d. C. This week. Its about two hours. Thank you, everyone. Coming andte you all getting here. We know it was quite an endeavor and we are terrifically happy to have such a great audience with us. Take their seats who are still Milling Around the room, and we will start in just about one minute. Ok, i think we are good. I am the senior director for refugee protection at human rights first, a u. S. Based Human Rights Organization that advocates for u. S. Leadership on human rights globally and u. S. Compliance with human rights commitments here at home. I want to begin by thanking the and the of Jones Day Firm head of pro bono here at jones day for their hospitality in welcoming us today and hosting todays event. We greatly appreciate the pro bono work of jones day and other law firms who are representing asylumseekers including children and many who are held in immigration detention and undergo the expedited removal process, both of which we will be discussing today. Pro bono lawyers witness many obstacles to legal counsel, to justice, and to fairness that face asylumseekers who are subjected to expedited removal and detention in our immigration system. In the wake of world war ii, the United States helped lead efforts to create a regime that had rules and conventions that would govern human rights and refugee protection so that people who fled from persecution would have safe haven and no longer be at risk. To bind itself to the provisions of the United Nations convention relating to the status of refugees when it signed on to the refugee protocol, and the u. S. , as you also know, is a party to the International Covenant on civil and political rights. In 1990 six, the u. S. Congress enacted into the u. S. Immigration law a process known as expedited removal, and that is a summary deportation process that sets up a gauntlet that people have to pass through asylumseekers have to pass through before they are even allowed to apply for asylum. The panelists today will be describing that process in detail as well as some of the challenges in that process. Due to that process, many legitimate asylumseekers do not even get a chance to apply for asylum or face great difficulties in the midst of that process. Those who undergo the process and succeed in passing that gauntlet are often held in immigration detention for many months, sometimes longer. In 2005, the u. S. Commission on International Religious freedom issued a comprehensive report on the treatment of asylumseekers in expedited removal and into tension. After that, they issued a number of report cards and a report on detention, and as we will here report, new, updated over 10 years after that initial report. You of the same problems as will here today still exist in the expedited removal and detention systems. The use of expedited removal and detention with respect to asylumseekers has increased sharply. In september, president obama will host a Leaders Summit at the United Nations to discuss and identify steps that many nations around the world can take to better address and improve the treatment of refugees globally. Somes panel identifies steps the United States can take to improve its own treatment of those who are seeking refugee protection here in this country. Byrne at the olga end of the table, will also outline some of the findings of. He human rights first report following those presentations, we are privileged today to hear reflections from representatives of the United Nations Refugee Agency and the department of Homeland Security. This panel is an opportunity to discuss challenges affecting asylumseekers in expedited removal and retention, reforms that could alleviate some of these challenges, the example United States sets for the rest of the world, and alternative approaches to receiving asylumseekers and extending them protection. We thank you all for joining us, and i also really thank our excellent lineup of panelists. To briefly introduce them, to my erect rite is mark hatfield, as,sident and ceo of hi director of a comprehensive study on asylumseekers and expedited removal. To his right is elizabeth cassidy, codirector of policy and research at the u. S. Commission on International Religious freedom. Beside her is tiffany lynch, senior policy analyst at ucirf. And then my colleague, olga associate for human rights first. Oli,y left, mary giovagn Deputy Assistant secretary for policy at the department of Homeland Security. To her left, leslie velez, senior Protection Officer at the United Nations office of the high commissioner for refugees. Thank you all. Mark . Mr. Hetfield thank you. The original study on asylumseekers in expedited removal for the u. S. Commission on International Religious freedom. I oversaw a team of four experts as well as nearly 60 researchers. The research was done from 2003 to 2004 and released in 2005. I want to give a little background first. The 1996 concern that improperly documented noncitizens could enter the United States and then disappear while waiting for a hearing, congress enacted and president bill clinton signed legislation creating expedited removal, a procedure which allowed immigration officers to summarily remove nonreasons who arrived in the u. S. Without opera travel documents without proper travel documents. That could mean false documents, no documents, or a visa that does not permit one to apply for asylum, which would be every visa. Prior to that time, an individual could not be removed from the United States without a hearing before an immigration judge. From the major issue 20,000 false passports to sweets, the persecuted often rely on false documents to seek asylum. Congress created screening procedures to prevent bona fide asylumseekers from being mistreated or expeditiously removed to their persecutors. The expedited removal process, however, occurs behind closed doors without outside monitoring, lawyers, or judicial review. Much of the process is deliver really swift and opaque deliberately swift and opaque. In order to verify asylumseekers were being protected as intended, congress authorized the commission on religious freedom to gain access to conduct a study on the process to look at for questions. One, if immigration officers expedite im sorry, if authorizingofficers expedited Removal Authority with regard to noncitizens who may be eligible for asylum work were improperly encouraging them to withdraw their applications for admission, incorrectly failing an asylumhem for hearing, known as a credible fear determination, incorrectly removing the two countries where they may face persecution, and if they were being detained improperly or under inappropriate conditions. The departments of justice and Homeland Security cooperated with the commission. They reviewed more than 900 case files, survey 19 detention facilities and all seven asylum offices. What did we find . The study report was over 500 pages. I will try to summarize it in less than five minutes. Dhs procedures require that an immigration officer explain to the noncitizen that he should ask for protection without delay if he has any fear of being returned home. Yet, we found that in more than 50 of the expedited removal interviews that we observed, this information was not conveyed to the applicant. The information procedures require that the noncitizen review this once they commit taken by the immigration officer, make necessary signctions, etc. , and then the statement. We found that in 72 of the cases we observed, the noncitizen scientists sworn statement without being given any opportunity to review it. We found the sworn statements taken by the immigration officer were not verbatim, were not verifiable, often attribute that information was conveyed to the noncitizen that was never in act conveyed, and sometimes contained questions which were never even asked. This was all in the file. These sworn statements look like verbatim transcripts, but they are not. We also found that in 32 of the cases where Immigration Judges and the subsequent asylum hearing found asylum applicants were not credible, the Immigration Judges specifically relied on these unreliable sworn statements. Dhs rules also require that when a noncitizen expresses a fear of return, he must be referred to an asylum officer to determine if that fear is credible. Yet, in nearly 15 of the cases we observed, noncitizens who expressed a fear of return were nonetheless removed without a referral to an asylum officer. Dhs, it seemed, were training their officers and requirements to protect Asylum Seekers and refugees but then tailing to verify that the officers were actually implementing these procedures. The review was strictly a paper file review. The actual officers were not observed, were not recorded. That was our job. We observed them. Dhs was not observing them to make sure they were following the rules. While dhs had established National Criteria to determine when asylumseekers in expedited removal should be released, we found no evidence this criteria was being implemented at the time. Fromund wide variations dhs office to office. We found new orleans released only 0. 5 of asylumseekers prior to their asylum hearing. New jersey released less than 4 . New york, 8 . San antonio released 94 . Chicago 81 percent of asylumseekers. The average noncitizen referred for a credible fear determination was released after 60 days, but 1 the world three were held for 90 days or more. Congress also asked that we ascertain if the asylumseekers were detained under inappropriate conditions. Based on our survey and visits to the largest of these facilities, we found that facilities where asylumseekers in everyned resembled essential respect conventional jails. Many facilities, in fact, were jails and prisons, and in some facilities, asylumseekers slept alongside convicts serving criminal sit criminal sentences or criminal noncivilians. Ice had experimented with alternatives to detention and lesspened one secure but prisonlike facility in broward county, florida, but that was a very lonely exception. The overwhelming majority of asylumseekers were detained for weeks, months, sometimes years in penal facilities or facilities based on a pedal model. Finally, concern was expressed that the dependent largely on if an Asylum Seeker was able to afford representation or find pro bono counsel. One in four asylumseekers were granted asylum, where is only one of 40 who were not were successful. The outcome of the case also seemed to depend on pure luck, i. E. Which judge he or she was assigned to. We found that among Immigration Judges sitting in the same city who appear a significant number of asylum cases, some granted of applications while others granted 80 . While asylumseekers could appeal, one cannot rely on the to correct these disparities among Immigration Judges, because we found that the pii at that time was reversing Immigration Judges only 2 to 4 at the time. Its worth emphasizing that while we were conducting the study, dhs expanded expedited Removal Authority to include not just immigration inspectors at ports of entry but also border in the tucson and laredo sectors along the southern border. The commission urged the department after the study not to expand expedited removal further until the serious flaws identified had been addressed and noted that all of the Commission Recommendations on expedited removal could be enacted without any legislation. Among our specific recommendations, well that a highlevel official be coordinated it to the process. To just start following its own procedures about releasing asylumseekers on detention and not detaining them under jaillike conditions when they are detained and that a number of Quality Assurance procedures and provisions be made to ensure that dhs and doj procedures designed to protect asylumseekers from wrongful detention or removal were being followed, such as video recording the taking of also one statements taken by cdp. Nonetheless, the george w. Bush administration expanded authority across the southern border without addressing the major findings of the study. We were optimistic reforms would be enacted because after the extensive Media Coverage of the study 11 years ago and after of leadership. Another recommendation that has not been followed is that dhs released more statistical information on an ongoing basis about who was being subject to expedited removal. Instead, the Obama Administration has been releasing even less information than was available under the previous administration. We do know that in the last year reviewed by the study, 43,920 noncitizens were expeditiously removed from the United States. In 2013, 100 3032 has been removed. There has been an expansion, and thats why the release of this followup study is just so important. Thank you. Ms. Acer thank you. Elizabeth cassidy. Thanks, eleanor. As mentioned, im from the u. S. Commission on International Religious freedom. My colleague tiffany and i are the staffers who continue to follow the issues from the study that mark just spoke about. Im going to talk about the new report weve just released. More than a decade after the study that mark directed was released, this new report and new continuing concerns about the treatment of asylumseekers in expedited removal and finds that most of the 2005 recommendations have not been implemented. Our research was less extensive than that for the 2005 study, but it did involve firsthand observations of dhs processing and detention and also involved interviews with the taint asylumseekers, meetings with dhs officials, conversations with Immigration Attorneys and Asylum Service providers, and a review of Public Service information. In addition to meetings and research, we traveled to california, new york, new jersey, florida, order rico, and times and on texas three in 2014 and 2015, and we visited ive ports of entry, for Border Patrol stations, and ive asylum offices. We also visited 15 immigration facilities around the United States between 2012 and 2015. Im going to talk about our key findings on the initial interviewing of noncitizens about the Information Available to noncitizens in expedited removal. Tiffany will then speak about detention and release and the overarching issues of management and funding. Mentioned, staff visited five warts of entry and for Border Patrol stations touring facilities and meeting with. Fficers we also were able to observe some interviews, although only a few. Many fewer than what the original study looked at, and we saw both sides of the virtual processing that is now used for most Border Crossers in the Rio Grande Valley sector of Border Patrol. This has been used since 2013 for firsttime apprehensions who speak english or spanish, and it details the noncitizen sitting in front of a computer monitor speaking over a phone handset to a Border Patrol agent a station elsewhere, either El Paso Texas or el centro, california, to an internetbased communicator. Despite the small number of interviews we were able to observe, we did see apples of noncompliance including failure to read back the answers and allow the interviewee to correct them before he or she signs the form we did see examples of noncompliance. Failu