Posted on 09/01/2020 11:50:43 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A federal judge on Monday blocked U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees from conducting the initial screening for people seeking asylum, dealing a setback to one of the Trump administration’s efforts to rein in asylum.
The nationwide injunction will likely have little, if any, immediate impact because the government has effectively suspended asylum during the coronavirus pandemic, citing public health concerns.
The Trump administration argued that designated CBP employees are trained comparably to asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, another agency within the Homeland Security Department. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon in Washington disagreed.
“Poppycock!” he wrote in a 22-page decision. “The training requirements cited in the government’s declaration do not come close to being ‘comparable’ to the training requirements of full asylum officers.”
Leon, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, said CBP employees get two to five weeks of distance and in-person training, while asylum officers get at least nine weeks of formal training.
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.
Representatives of the Homeland Security and Justice Departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said it does not comment on pending litigation.
Lawyers for mothers and their children from Mexico, Ecuador and Honduras who failed the screening — known as a “credible fear” interview, in which they must persuade officials they have a credible fear of persecution in their home country — argued that CBP employees were not authorized to do the work and lacked training.
“This decision puts an end to the sham process of using adversarial Border Patrol agents to conduct highly sensitive interviews with asylum-seekers,”
(Excerpt) Read more at apnews.com ...
The easier move for Trump would appear to just give them the extra few weeks of training rather than fight years of appeals.
STOP ALL IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA, 40 years or more!
Judges making up laws again.
Trump apparently has the power to ban ALL asylum seekers from entering but not from setting the standard for who will interview them to enter an approval process.
That is, frankly speaking, nuts.
Show me in the Constitution where it says the Judicial Branch has any say in immigration law, because I can show you where it says immigration is the sole responsibility of the Executive branch.
judge
RE: R O G U E
judge
Too many of them in this country - AT EVERY LEVEL!
RE: STOP ALL IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA, 40 years or more!
Then we better have more babies and stop killing them in the womb in the meantime because our birth to death replacement rate is DECLINING.
Sure seems like it.
No denying it...
Two evil men.
Not qualified?! Too adversarial?!
Who IS qualified and ALL screening is adversarial by definition!
The judge is a loon!
The easy fix would be to deploy asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with the border patrol.
No Border Patrol Agent is qualified to screen asylum seekers when they are reading the script handed to them on the other side of the border...What a crock.
Just ignore the ruling. Let judges start enforcing their own rulings.
“The easy fix would be to deploy asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services with the border patrol.”
Or just reclassify the CBP employees as asylum officers, since they’re already trained for screening.
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