Judge Bars Trump Administration From Blanket Detention Of Asylum Seekers

A judge ordered ICE to follow its own policies and review asylum-seekers for parole.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Monday to halt a silent yet a dramatic shift in the way the U.S. deals with certain asylum-seekers who have presented themselves at the U.S. border.

Advocacy groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First, alleged in a class action lawsuit representing some 800 people that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not following its own policies for offering parole in five of its field offices.

Rather than investigating asylum seekers’ requests for parole on a case-by-case basis, ICE is issuing blanket denials and keeping people in detention for months on end, the groups allege.

The Trump administration denied it had issued a policy change, but data in the lawsuit show that from 2011 to 2013, the field offices in Detroit, El Paso, Los Angeles, Newark and Philadelphia granted parole to 92 percent of asylum-seekers. In the first eight months of Trump’s presidency, that rate dropped to 4 percent.

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered ICE to “do what they already admit is required” and make individualized assessments on whether asylum-seekers should receive parole after they arrive in the U.S.

“To mandate that ICE provide these baseline procedures to those entering our country – individuals who have often fled violence and persecution to seek safety on our shores – is no great judicial leap,” he wrote. “Rather, the issuance of injunctive relief in this case serves only to hold Defendants accountable to their own governing policies and to ensure that Plaintiffs receive the protections they are due under the Parole Directive.”

"To mandate that ICE provide these baseline procedures to those entering our country – individuals who have often fled violence and persecution to seek safety on our shores – is no great judicial leap." -- U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg

At issue is the right of those seeking shelter in the United States to be released while their applications for asylum are making their way through the courts, a process that can take years. While the government is entitled to hold them in detention, a 2009 directive provides that those who have shown what is known as a “credible fear” in an initial interview have a right to be considered for release.

“In light of the drastic decline in parole-grant rates at the five ICE field offices, and the affidavits by the named plaintiffs and their counsel regarding the processing of their parole applications, this court finds that the asylum-seekers are able to demonstrate that individualized parole determinations are likely no longer par for the course,” Boasberg wrote.

READ THE FULL TEXT OF THE JUDGE-- Be enlightened!
https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/memorandum-opinion-granting-preliminary-injunction

Do you still believe in the law? Will Mr. Trump obey the Court? Should he obey the Court/Judge? Better yet, will they follow their own policies, albeit by force? CM