Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policies are more than illegal under Federal and international law. Now his most recent pronouncements to limit the analyses for granting asylum to individuals and families seeking safety in the United States have gone beyond any permissible limits allowed by international treaty or Federal law. His ill-informed, ill-founded and arbitrary policy statements and operating orders to Federal agencies have specifically violated over a half century of Federal and international law to establish the United States as a terrorist nation and Trump and his surrogates as human rights violators. Once again, Trump’s prejudice, racism, ignorance, inexperience, and incompetence continue to severely harm the country he took an oath to protect and serve.
In 1968 the United States along with 144 other countries of the United Nations executed and ratified an international “Refugee Convention”[1] that was the outcome of seventeen years of efforts from 1951 to protect the thousands of displaced persons who were victims of World War II. The Refugee Convention spelled out the protections those participating countries established for all refugees and asylum seekers regardless their places of origin or their stories.
The Convention was not a self-executing treaty. Each signatory was required to pass appropriate, country-specific laws for compliance. As a result, the United States codified its 1967 Protocol Articles 1-34[2] into its domestic laws that updated existing statutes and passed new ones that are still valid and existing.
For 50 years the Convention and the Protocol Articles have governed the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers required of every president until Donald Trump.
The Convention’s first Article defines a refugee as a “person who owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country[3]; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”
The Convention’s only disqualifier of asylum seekers is for persons who have been found guilty of “a serious crime” or have been found to have engaged in “nefarious acts.”[4]
The Refugee Convention and Protocol Articles specifically extend various protections to the covered individuals (who it refers to as “aliens”):
● Aliens only have to be on United States. soil: They are not required to come thru a port of entry.[5]
● Aliens cannot be charged with the crime of “illegal entry.”[6]
● Aliens have one year to apply for asylum.
● Aliens must provide proof of substantial danger requiring asylum.[7]
● Family units must be kept together and adjudicated as a single application.[8]
● Aliens must be granted access to legal counsel and the courts.[9]
● Aliens may be finger printed and photographed for identification.
● Aliens have the right to appeal court decisions within 30 days.[10]
● If asylum is denied the alien cannot be returned to country they fled, a neutral safe third country must be found.
● The asylum process should take no more than 180 days after alien is positively identified and the request for asylum is filed.
● There can be no bias in determining asylum.[11]
● Any laws passed regarding refugees and asylum seekers must be in compliance with the Refugee Convention.
● Aliens’ religious beliefs must be honored; items – like rosaries – cannot be confiscated.[12]
● Violations constitute human rights violations at a minimum.[13]
● Separating parents and children is considered terrorism[14], add to it kidnapping, discrimination based on ethnicity and illegal imprisonment constitutes crimes against humanity.
Except for those who are deliberately choosing to remain ignorant of the avalanche of stories that have appeared in national and international media, and hermits who are living off the grid, the manifest violations of the laws by Trump and his surrogates has been obvious for months. And anyone who has even a vague knowledge of the home countries of the immigrants coming to the United States seeking asylum knows that they are leaving dangerous and possibly fatal situations that threaten themselves and their children.
For instance, the South American “Northern Triangle” countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador are virtual war zones for average citizens. Plagued by drug trafficking, some of the highest murder rates in the world, virulent gang activity the street wars of which endanger every citizen of those countries, extortion that is commonplace throughout the region, and rape and physical assault of women is forcing large numbers of those populations out of their countries.
In Columbia, 7.4 million of the 8.7 million population are displaced within their own country due to the pervasive crime and terrorism that afflicts the country. As a producer of a substantial portion of the world’s cocaine, drug trafficking and gang activities dominate the social order and threaten virtually every citizen. Political leaders are commonly assassinated. Kidnapping and murder are commonplace. Gender violence, not just sexual violence or rape, has taken place on a gigantic scale with more than 90,000 cases of sexual violence against women reported during fifty years of Columbia’s armed conflict, with less than ten percent of the perpetrators sentenced for their crimes. In essence, no one is safe.
Mexico’s drug cartels are well known across the world. Their dominance has led to a shortage of police of more than 116,000 unfilled positions, assassinations of politicians, and a murder rate that equates to a death every fifteen minutes, which last year totaled 29,168 reported murders. Here again, high incidences of rape and other forms of violence against women have been reported. Simultaneously political and police graft and criminality are common and ongoing.
Similarly, Venezuela remains one of the world’s most dangerous countries; the notable deterioration in quality of life for Venezuelan citizens over the course of 2017 contributed to a dire situation in which over seventy-three (73) Venezuelans died a violent death every day. Street gangs and organized crime groups have made high profile violent crime such as murder, robbery and kidnapping commonplace making four of Venezuela’s cities among the top ten most dangerous in the world. In 2017, with 31,570,000 residents, Venezuela reported 26,616 homicides which is over 150% more than the 17,500 murders in the United States reported for a population of 325,000,000.
Thus, it is inarguable that many, if not all of the individuals making their dangerous journeys to the United States from any country south of the United States are eligible for consideration for entry under existing laws governing asylum under long-used traditional “credible fear” analyses as are others from countries on other continents.
The issue is not the dangers immigrants may threaten for the United States. The issue is whether the politicians and government officials charged to enforce the laws of the United States can willfully fail and refuse to follow those laws. If they do, there is no law. And that is the situation that every citizen of the United States now faces from Donald Trump’s unlawful – criminal – conduct.
In failing to follow long-established international and Federal law, Trump’s and his surrogates’ racism have established the United States a terrorist nation through their human rights violations and their crimes against humanity. The time for confrontation in long passed. Congress – and voters at large – must act to stop the Trump administration’s blatant criminality.
[3] There is substantial public documentation that the refugees seeking entry into the United States face substantial threats of harm and/or death in the countries from which they have fled. Further, U.S. government intelligence agencies have published substantial documentation related to the contemporary dangers of the countries involved. Various sections of the CIA World Factbook provide discussions of the dangers in various countries. See: https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/14/americas/el-salvador-gangs-women-intl/index.html
[4] Clearly, the standard being used, misdemeanor allegations of “unlawful entry” into the United States does not and cannot apply under the existing terms of the Refugee Convention.
[5] ALL of the individuals currently under arrest by Federal enforcement agencies were found and detained in the United States and are therefore being illegally held under the terms of the Refugee Convention.
[8] It is abundantly clear that family units have NOT been kept together and their applications have NOT been adjudicated together in direct violation of the Refugee Convention.
[13] Clearly, the current actions of the administration qualify as “human rights violations” under the terms of the Refugee Convention.
[14] The current actions of the U.S. government qualify as terrorism under the terms of the Refugee Convention.