U.S. makes clear to asylum-seekers: We will not protect survivors of persecution

My colleagues and I at the Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network see the same fear in our clients awaiting asylum hearings here in Georgia.

Many have survived unimaginable harm, often through strength of will and love for their families alone, only to face a system that may send them back to danger — or death.

With odds of winning an asylum case hovering around 5% for decades, Georgia has long been home to some of the harshest immigration courts in the country.

America pledged to protect refugees and asylees

Credit: Handout

Credit: Handout

Like so many passengers on the St. Louis, numerous immigrants have been tortured and killed in their home countries after losing their asylum cases in the United States.

I once worked with a client who was detained for years in South Georgia’s Stewart Detention Center. He was a gay man from Cameroon, where being gay is criminalized. When his relationship with his male partner was discovered, he was brutally beaten by a mob. His partner was murdered before his eyes.

Despite this, a judge denied his asylum case and ordered him deported — finding this suffering was not enough to be considered “persecution.” Only after a yearslong appellate battle did he win safety, and in the meantime, his health declined from abysmal conditions at Stewart. Today, he volunteers in his community and hopes to join the U.S. military.

Unfortunately, his story is not an aberration. His struggles to access justice, even as a survivor of unspeakable persecution, are consistent with hundreds of survivors we have worked with over the years — particularly those without legal representation.

In the wake of the Holocaust, the United States pledged to protect those who would be persecuted for their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or other core qualities they cannot change or hide. We enshrined the right to asylum, to freedom from persecution. “Never again,” we said, and signed the 1967 Refugee Protocol and passed the Refugee Act of 1980.

But for our clients, the right to safety feels as distant as it did for the passengers of the St. Louis. We explain that government delays will likely leave them without work authorization for months — or longer — jeopardizing their ability to secure housing, hold jobs and feed their families. We also tell them, “You will eventually have the chance to explain your case to a judge,” knowing that the judge denied 95 out of the last 100 cases he saw.

U.S. policy now makes it harder for persecution victims

This winter, the government halted adjudication of many asylum cases and ramped up efforts to deport asylum-seekers to unsafe third countries such as Honduras and Uganda.

Immigration judges have been instructed to deport asylum-seekers to third countries — or nations that have nothing to do with the asylee’s nationality — without regard to whether those third countries will accept them or whether survivors can access safety or justice upon arrival.

Judges who might otherwise grant protection now face enormous pressure to deport asylum-seekers en masse, having witnessed over a hundred of their colleagues summarily fired over the last year. Meanwhile, new legal precedent comes out every week, steadily chipping away access to asylum protection.

The message is clear: We will not protect survivors of persecution.

The passengers of the St. Louis had no legal pathway to safety in the United States. Survivors of persecution today do. Asking for asylum protection is a legal right, not a loophole. In fact, asylum-seekers must ask for asylum at the U.S. border or within the United States.

Our clients are asking for safety the right way.

Unfortunately, even within this legal route, the cards are stacked so heavily against asylum-seekers that it often feels like a farce.

Our asylum system slams the door on people in imminent danger of torture and death. This humanitarian crisis will only worsen in the years ahead. I hope we can counter misinformation about the asylum system with facts about the realities our clients face and spark empathetic reform.

But instead, I see the St. Louis turn away and drift back toward danger.

Adriana Heffley is the director of legal services at Georgia Asylum and Immigration Network.