A federal judge has blocked the reckless, Stephen Miller-led decision shifting some of the power of determining initial asylum claims from experienced U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) asylum officers to unqualified Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents, saying in the ruling that “[t]he training requirements cited in the government’s declaration do not come close to being ‘comparable’ to the training requirements of full asylum officers.”
The administration had claimed last year it was giving some authority to unqualified border agents in response to families waiting at the southern border, and that agents were “trained comparably,” the Associated Press reported. That claim was smacked down by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee: “’Poppycock!’ he wrote in a 22-page decision,” the report continued.
According to the AP, Leon noted that CBP employees got as few as two weeks of training, “while asylum officers get at least nine weeks of formal training,” the report said. “Leon also cast doubt on whether CBP, a law enforcement agency that includes the Border Patrol, could do screenings in a non-adversarial manner, as regulations require.”
As I noted last year, in just 2019 alone, border agents were accused of sexually and verbally abusing detained children, pleaded guilty to assaulting migrants, wrongfully jailed a U.S. citizen, and continued to separate families at the border in violation of a federal judge’s court order. More recently, a special CBP tactical unit kidnapped right off the street demonstrators in Portland, Oregon, who were protesting police violence.
That same tactical unit then assisted border agents in raiding a medical humanitarian camp at the border as a form of retaliation. If there’s any questions about whether agents can do screenings in a “non-adversarial manner,” I think all of that answers that.
U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris had led a letter to the administration “expressing concern and demanding answers” over Miller’s decision, which of course wasn’t made out of some courtesy for asylum-seekers, but because Miller and others “were outraged by the rate at which individuals passed their initial screenings.”
The changes began to have some of the effect Miller and friends sought, the AP report said: “CBP training began last year, and as of February, 91 employees were doing initial screenings, according to a report by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. They approved 37% of people over a 12-month period that ended in May, compared with 64% by USCIS asylum officers.” However, even with the judge’s ruling, there’ll still be little relief for most asylum-seekers: Miller’s use of the novel coronavirus pandemic continues to turn them away.
