Asylum Seekers Unprotected, Bipartisan Panel Concludes
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WASHINGTON — A bipartisan commission says the agency in charge of securing America’s borders is failing to protect asylum seekers from being wrongly deported or treated like criminals.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom said in a report released yesterday that the Homeland Security Department expanded expedited removal of immigrants — against the commission’s recommendation — and continues to jail asylum seekers with criminals.
The commission said few of the changes it had recommended to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff have been made.
“Despite the passage of two years and a personal meeting with Secretary Chertoff and our expectation he would establish a system that both protects our borders and asylum, we are disappointed and dismayed,” the commission’s chairwoman, Felice Gaer, said.
Stewart Baker, who is the assistant secretary for policy at DHS, said several of the recommendations have been carried out but many “were not entirely realistic and very difficult to implement.”
Asylum seekers are often detained while officials determine if their claim of persecution is credible. The commission found two years ago that some were shackled, kept in solitary confinement, or strip-searched.
Mr. Baker said building separate facilities only for asylum seekers and flying them to a better facility would be expensive and might serve as incentive for people to claim asylum.
The commission was required by Congress to study DHS and Justice Department asylum procedures. The 2005 study had extra significance because commission members were allowed to observe parts of the asylum screening process.
Senator Brownback, a Republican of Kansas, one of the lawmakers who asked for a follow-up to that study, said the committee’s recommendations should be taken seriously.
The director of the original study, Mark Hetfield, said the commission found two years ago that DHS was not following special procedures Congress put in place to ensure legitimate asylum seekers weren’t turned away as the country tightened immigration laws. Little has changed, he said.
