Johnson said she thinks her client’s illness, along with the incomplete translation, likely muddied what should have been an open-and-shut CAT case. She asked ICE to refer Abeba back to USCIS for another interview when Abeba felt well enough and proper translation was available. In an email reviewed by the California Newsroom, an ICE officer wrote that Abeba is “not eligible” for a second interview, because she’d already had one.
In other words, the asylum officer’s decision was final, and under the new rules, there was no way to appeal it.
Advocates for immigrants say there are further signs that the screening process is deteriorating as applicants’ attorneys and judges have been sidelined. Natalie Cadwalader-Schultheis, a San Diego-based attorney with Human Rights First, said screenings used to take anywhere from half an hour to four hours. She now has clients who say their interviews lasted as little as five minutes.
According to her organization’s new report, “these torture screenings are a farce by design.”
The report also highlights a trend that alarms human rights watchdogs. Some asylum seekers at the border told the researchers that their requests for humanitarian protection were ignored. “In some instances, officers told [asylum seekers] they were being transported to other facilities where they would have asylum interviews, only to be taken to staging areas for their removal,” the report says.
In one testimonial from the report, a Russian woman refused to board a government flight to Costa Rica, demanding to know why she was being deported. According to the report, officers “falsely stated that there had been a court decision and told her she should just go quietly so as not to traumatize her children, who were crying.”
‘It’s too quiet’
Both ICE and USCIS have refused to give Abeba any further documents related to her interview, according to Johnson. In one email to Johnson, reviewed by the California Newsroom, USCIS implied that either the interview did not happen or that the agency doesn’t have to share the records with detainees’ lawyers. “The whole thing is just this incredibly frustrating cycle where nobody can tell me anything,” Johnson said.
When Abeba asked to see the detailed notes from her interview, which asylum officers are required to take, an ICE officer suggested she file a Freedom of Information Act request, or FOIA.
When told about this suggestion, Scarborough, a veteran immigration attorney, called it “stupid.”
“You know how long it takes to get a FOIA response? Two to three months,” she said. “You know what’s going to happen in two to three months? Your client’s going to be deported.”
The California Newsroom spoke with several immigration attorneys around the country who say they’re being stonewalled in similar ways.
“The CAT application process has been disappeared from us,” Cadwalader-Schultheis said. “It’s happening absolutely in secret, and they don’t want us understanding how it works. If we did, I think it would be very apparent just how illegal and how much of a sham this whole thing is.”
Several of the asylum-focused attorneys the California Newsroom spoke with convene a weekly phone call to compare cases and try to piece together the administration’s new rules amidst a gaping lack of transparency. “We’re all just trying to figure it out in real time,” said Babaie, the Texas legal services director, who participates in the call.
The group seems to be at the bleeding edge of an unfolding situation that even most immigration lawyers have not yet realized, just as even the savviest experts took months to catch on to Trump’s family separation policy in 2018.
Tess Feldman, an immigration attorney who directs Southwestern Law School’s Asylum Law Clinic, said she suspects CAT applicants are being rushed through the screening process, if they get one, then being deported quickly. Because the Trump administration has done away with a “consultation period” that previously allowed applicants to contact an attorney before their screening, she thinks many applicants may not be reaching out to lawyers at all. “It’s just silent,” she said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not a problem. In fact, it’s too quiet.”
“In 90 days,” she said, “I think we’ll look back and say, how did we not know this was happening in May?”
‘They’re going to know she’s there’
It’s unclear what high-level immigration officials actually know about recent changes to humanitarian protection. Asked about what is currently happening when detained migrants express fear of returning to their countries, a spokesperson for USCIS provided links to several websites that don’t reflect the new rules, including that judges no longer review screening decisions.
The USCIS did not answer specific questions about the discrepancy, and why public websites that contain outdated information are still online.
In its class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the ACLU argues that the president does not have the power to broadly suspend protections laid out in law by Congress.
If the judge hearing the case rules to suspend the president’s executive order, thousands of asylum seekers could be allowed to stay in the country until they can apply for protection in immigration court. Those like Abeba, who have already failed screenings under the order, would be allowed a do-over. But this time, they could have their lawyers present, and they’d have the right to appeal negative decisions.
