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A federal court in Washington, D.C., heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit accusing the Biden administration of racial discrimination and rights violations of Haitian asylum seekers. The suit was brought on behalf of 11 Haitian asylum seekers who were abused by U.S. border agents as more than 15,000 people, mostly from Haiti, were forced to stay in a makeshift border encampment on the banks of the Rio Grande near the Acuña-Del Rio International Bridge in Texas. One of the plaintiffs is Mirard Joseph, the asylum seeker whose image went viral after being photographed while a Border Patrol agent on horseback lashed him with split reins, grabbed his neck and gripped Joseph by the shirt collar. “This is a critical junction in our country here in the United States as we make sure to uphold human rights and understanding seeking asylum is a human right,” says Guerline Jozef, executive director of immigrant advocacy organization Haitian Bridge Alliance, which helped bring the case on behalf of asylum seekers. “We will continue to push forward and make sure that accountability is served but also we have systematic change in the way that we receive people in the United States.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The imaginative faculties of standard Australian politicians retreat to some strange, deathly place on certain issues. In that wasteland, they are often unrecoverable. Like juveniles demanding instant reward, these representatives find complexity hideous, troubling, discomforting. Focus on the prospect of immediate electoral gain, the crude punch, the bruising, the hurt. That, in sum, is Canberra’s policy towards refugees.
With this month’s appearance of 39 asylum seekers on some of the most remote shorelines on the planet in Western Australia, the customary wells of hysteria were again being tapped for political gain. “Here we go again,” lamented the Tasmanian Greens Senator Nick McKim. “A boat arrives with desperate refugees who need our help and we’re suddenly in a ‘political crisis’ because the media said so”.
One desperate politician was opposition leader Peter Dutton, who wondered how these dangerous subversives could have ever arrived undetected in the first place. “The government has all sorts of problems,” he crowed. “It’s clear that they don’t have the same surveillance in place that we had when we were in government.”
Dutton found it “inconceivable a boat of this size, carrying 40-plus people, could make it to the mainland without there being any detection.” The insinuation is hard to ignore: the Labor government permitted the arrival to take place.
The 2022-3 Australia Border Force annual report had noted a reduction of “maritime patrol days” by 6% and aerial patrols by 14%, the result of vessel maintenance, personnel shortages and logistical difficulties when operating in remote parts off the coast. Overall budgetary costs for the ABF have also been adjusted to account for the fact that the 2022-3 budget was, as Home Affairs department chief finance officer Stephanie Cargill explained in May year, “overspent”.
The ABF chief, Michael Outram, has even gone so far as to reproach Dutton for his assessment about funding cuts, which deceptively, even mendaciously suggest belt tightening on the part of the Albanese government. “Border Force funding is currently the highest it’s been since its establishment in 2015 and in the last year, the ABF has received additional funding totalling hundreds of millions of dollars, to support maritime and land based operations.”
All in all, there has hardly been a softening of the brutal policy that presumptively and prematurely judges undocumented naval arrivals as unworthy. As the ABF statement on the arrivals notes with customary severity, “Australia’s tough border protection policies means that no one who travels unauthorised by boat will ever be allowed to settle permanently in Australia. The only way to travel to Australia is legally, with an Australian visa.”
The dubious rationale for maintaining the policy, formally known as Operation Sovereign Borders, is still very much in place. “Austraia,” the ABF continues to explain, “remains committed to protecting its borders, stamping out people smuggling and preventing vulnerable people from risking their lives on futile journeys. The people smuggling business model is built on the exploitation of information and selling lies to vulnerable people who will give up everything to risk their lives at sea.”
Rear Admiral Brett Sonter, who leads Operation Sovereign Borders, had also stated that nothing has changed. “The mission of Operation Sovereign Borders remains the same today as it was when it was established in 2013: protect Australia’s borders, combat people smuggling in our region, and importantly, prevent people from risking their lives at sea.” To suggest otherwise would create an “alternative narrative” susceptible to exploitation “by criminal people smugglers to deceive potential irregular immigrants and convince them to risk their lives and travel to Australia by boat.”
This became a point of contention for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who decided to give Dutton a parliamentary scalding by suggesting that his opponents were “just full of nonsense, and they should stop being a cheer squad for people, encouraging people smuggling.”
Such “business models”, as they are derisively and demagogically called, are the natural consequence of a yearning to flee. It is a yearning that is being globally punished, notably by wealthier states less than keen to accept asylum seekers. Canberra’s savage approach to the problem – non-settlement in Australia of those eventually found to be refugees and detaining individuals in concentration camps in the Pacific – has become the envy of border protection fetishists. The British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, for instance, dreams of an Australia-styled solution that will involve “turning the boats back” and deporting asylum seekers to Rwanda. Unfortunately for him, and most fortunately for humanitarians, an army of lawyers and judges have frustrated his vision.
The border fetishists also make a crucial omission. The people smugglers, who are of all stripes of opportunism and exploitation rather than some monolithic bloc, are merely facilitating the provisions of the United Nations Refugee Convention. All who arrive should not be discriminated against on the basis of how they arrive or their backgrounds – the articles of the Convention state as much – yet Australia’s border policy remains persistently cruel and defiant. Whenever a boat appears with a small cargo full of desperate individuals who make it to land, the fantasies of invasion, unwarranted intrusion and unwanted infiltration catch alight. It was high time they were snuffed out.
The post Border Paranoia in Fortress Australia first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Critics are condemning a proposal by a bipartisan group of U.S. senators that would overhaul the immigration system, noting that the bill would diminish the rights of asylum seekers. The bipartisan bill, introduced on Sunday by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Arizona), Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), has been months in the making. In addition to implementing several…
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This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Three Chinese nationals who fled to Thailand in November and arrived at Taipei’s airport on Tuesday told Radio Free Asia they fear arrest if they return to Beijing and are planning to seek assistance from the Taiwanese government to move to a third country.
Tian Yongde, Wei Yani and Huang Xingxing all obtained United Nations temporary refugee cards in Bangkok after traveling there in November. All three arrived in Taiwan on a flight from Kuala Lumpur and had tickets to board another flight to Beijing.
But in an interview with RFA late Tuesday, Tian Yongde said the three were instead preparing to pass through a security checkpoint at Taoyuan Airport in order to stay in Taiwan.
“I hope the Taiwan government will give me some time and let me wait here,” he said. “Taiwan is recognized for its high quality, and it is safe and secure to wait for a U.S. visa in Taiwan.”
Tian, 52, said authorities began keeping tabs on him in 2005 when he visited the home of Zhao Ziyang, China’s former prime minister who was removed from power in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre and kept under house arrest for 16 years.
After that, Tian was unable to work and was summoned by police many times for writing articles or participating in “group incidents.”
RFA was not immediately able to verify the account of Tian and his traveling companions, but they forwarded images of the identification cards provided to them by the U.N. refugee agency.
“I was arrested twice for ‘subversion of state power’ in 2009 and 2011,” Tian said. “The first time, I gave materials to petitioners, and I was said to be illegally holding state secrets.”
The other two people – 53-year-old Wei Yani and 17-year-old Huang Xingxing – are mother and son. They are unrelated to Tian, and only met him once they arrived in late November in Thailand. They eventually made plans to travel together.
‘Unsafe in Thailand’
Wei said she was imprisoned four times in China for a total of 10 years for petitioning for basic rights for herself and for friends. Authorities accused her of “picking quarrels and provoking troubles” and “subverting state power,” she told RFA.
She said she had trouble finding work after she was released from prison in June, and also had one more criminal trial pending.
“So I borrowed money from others to apply for a refugee certificate with my son,” she told RFA. “I just want to be able to move on from here [Taiwan] through media appeals.”
Tian recorded a video at Taoyuan Airport in which he said he feels more safe in Taiwan than in Thailand, where authorities have recently sent a number of prominent activists and dissidents back to China.
“Hello everyone, I am Tian Yongde,” he said in the video. “Because I feel unsafe in Thailand, when I came to Taiwan, which feels relatively safe, my purpose is to go to the United States.”
Wei said she and her son will seek asylum in the United States or the Netherlands if they are allowed to stay in Taiwan. In the future, she would like to help Chinese people petition for complaints.
“I still have more things to do,” Wei said, referring to her previous work with writing and gathering petitions.
The Taiwan Immigration Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by RFA on the three Chinese nationals.
Edited by Chen Meihua, He Ping and Matt Reed.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Xia Xiaohua for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Progressives on Saturday urged the U.S. President to halt his immigration-related appeals to “a voter who doesn’t exist” as he promised voters at a campaign event in South Carolina that he would immediately “shut down the border” between the U.S. and Mexico if Congress passes a bipartisan immigration bill. Senators are expected to release the legislative text of the bill this week…
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Republicans are aiming to erode legal immigration pathways as part of their latest attacks on immigration, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) warned this week as the White House negotiates an immigration deal with the GOP to prevent a government shutdown. On social media, Ocasio-Cortez highlighted a portion of a House Oversight Committee hearing on immigration from Wednesday…
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On September 22, 2023, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced it would begin paying growers to use the notorious H-2A contract foreign labor (or guestworker) program. Tapping into $65 million from the American Rescue Act, the USDA will pay between $25,000 and $2 million per application to defray the expenses of recruiting migrant workers from three Central American countries…
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As Senate leaders say President Biden will have to wait until next year to negotiate a deal with Republicans on immigration as part of an emergency funding package, the leading GOP presidential candidate doubled down on his hateful comments about immigrants that echoed Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. This comes as Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a major Trump supporter, approved a sweeping new law that…
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Across the globe, refugees, always treated as the pox of public policy, continue to feature in news reports describing anguish, despair and persistent persecution. If they are not facing barbed wire barriers in Europe, they are being conveyed, where possible, to third countries to be processed in lengthy fashion. Policy makers fiddle and cook the legal record to justify such measures, finding fault with instruments of international protection such as the United Nations Refugee Convention of 1951.
A very dramatic example of roughing up and violence is taking place against Afghans in Pakistan, a country that, despite having a lengthy association with hosting refugees, has yet to ratify the primary Convention. Yet in March 2023, the UNHCR noted that Pakistan hosted 1.35 million registered refugees. The organisation praised Pakistan for its “long and commendable tradition of providing protection to refugees and asylum-seekers”, noting that the current number comprised “mainly Afghan refugees holding Proof of Registration (PoR), as well as a small number of non-Afghan refugees and asylum seekers from other countries such as Myanmar, Yemen, Somalia and Syria.”
Such a rosy assessment detracts from the complex nature of the status of Afghans in that country, characterised by, in some cases, the absence of visas and passports, the expiration of visas and the long wait for renewals. Then comes the tense, heavy mix of domestic politics.
On September 15, the federal government ordered all individual Afghans residing in the country illegally to leave the country by November 1 or face deportation. The order affects some 1.7 million Afghans residing in the country, though the figures on the undocumented vary with dizzy fluctuations.
It is proving disastrous for those vulnerable individuals who fled a country where the Taliban has returned to power. To date, 400,000 are said to have left Pakistan via border crossings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Baluchistan, with one estimate from the International Rescue Committee suggesting that 10,000 are being returned to Afghanistan each day. These include the whole spectrum of vulnerable persons: women, girls, human rights activists, journalists and those formerly in the employ of the previous Western-backed government.
The picture is an ugly one indeed, complicated by Pakistan’s own domestic ills and complex relationship with Kabul. During the course of the vacuously named Global War on Terror, Afghanistan came to be seen as a problem for Pakistani security, its refugee camps accused as being incubators for fractious Afghan militants. Kabul, at that point yet to return to Taliban control, accused Islamabad of destabilising its own security by providing sanctuary for those very same militants. In the aftermath of the killing of former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani in September 2011, the victim of a daring suicide attack on his residency, Pakistan’s then Foreign Minister, Hina Rabbani Khar, proved roundly dismissive: “We are not responsible if Afghan refugees crossed the border and entered Kabul, stayed in a guest house and attacked Professor Rabbani.”
The latest chapter of demonisation comes on the coattails of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. Brutal night raids by police, featuring beatings, ominous threats and detention, have become the hallmarks of the expulsion campaign. The police forces, themselves spoiled by corruption and opportunism, are prone to pilfering property, including jewellery and livestock.
In October, Mir Ahmad Rauf, who heads the Afghan Refugees’ Council in Pakistan reported “widespread destruction of Afghan homes in Islamabad’s B-17, Karachi, and other parts of Pakistan.” Last month, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom issued a statement expressing concern at “reports of increased detainment, violence, and intimidation against the Ahmadiyya and Afghan refugee communities” in the country.
To add to this failure of protection is the status of many who, despite being Afghan, were born in Pakistan and never set foot in Afghanistan. In 2018, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that his government would be amenable to granting citizenship to Afghans born in the country. The promise (amenability is always contingent) was never enacted into law, and Khan is now persona non grata with Pakistan’s usurpers.
The protective, humanitarian burden for processing claims by Afghans in other countries has also been reluctantly shared. To return to Afghanistan spells potential repression and persecution; but to find a country in the European Union, or to seek sanctuary in the United States, Australia and others, has been nigh impossible for most.
When asylum has been considered, it has often been done with an emphasis on prioritising the contributions of men who had performed military and security roles in the previous Western-backed Kabul administration. There is a delicious irony to this, given the evangelical promises of US President George W. Bush to liberate the country’s women from the clutches of obscurantist fundamentalism.
On December 1, a three-member bench of the Pakistani Supreme Court sought responses from the various arms of the government, including the apex committee led by the Prime Minister, foreign office, and army chief on their decision to expel Afghan nationals. Given the caretaker status of the current government, which has all but outsourced foreign policy to the military, including the “Afghan issue”, legal questions can be asked.
One of the petitioners to the court, Senator Farhatullah Babar, states that current government members are technically unelected to represent the country. “So, the court would need to decide whether a caretaker government with such a restrictive mandate can take such a major policy decision, and in my view, this is beyond the power of the caretaker government.” Those Afghans remaining in Pakistan can only wait.
The post Banished from Pakistan: Islamabad Moves on Afghan Refugees first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Chinese dissident Chen Siming, who refused to board a flight to China while transiting through Taiwan, has been granted political asylum in Canada.
In an exclusive interview with Radio Free Asia after arriving in Vancouver on Oct. 5, Chen said he hopes to adapt to life in Canada as soon as possible and find a job to make a living. If he takes good care of himself, he said he will be more powerful to help the pro-democracy movement and overthrow the power of the Chinese Communist Party.
“After I got out of the airport [in Vancouver], I was very happy, my heart was at peace, and I was in the free world,” said Chen, an outspoken activist who recently published an open letter commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre – a banned topic in China.
The Hunan province native fled from China in July to Laos, despite a travel ban imposed on him. He arrived in Laos just as the Chinese human rights lawyer Lu Siwei was detained by the local authorities, and was subsequently repatriated to China. A fearful Chen therefore headed to Bangkok, but remained concerned he would be arrested by Thai authorities who have previously sent Chinese political refugees back. So he bought a flight ticket for the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, routed through the democratic island of Taiwan on Sept. 22.
Chen remained under the care of Taiwan’s Immigration Department for more than 10 days at the airport in Taipei. A few days after arriving in Taoyuan airport, Taiwan’s New School for Democracy sent someone to check on his daily living needs and help him apply for a temporary entry permit as he awaited asylum in a third country.
At the same time, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees contacted him to help find a country that would officially accept him. Chen said he received backing from U.S. and Canada-based activists such as Sheng Xue, Jie Lijian and Wang Dan, which helped him arrive in Canada in a record 14 days.
While Chen felt uncertain about the future when staying in Taiwan, he was not worried. “The first is not to be deported to mainland China, and the second is not to be deported to Thailand. It doesn’t matter if the [waiting] time is longer. In Taiwan, I feel very safe, even in prison, let alone the immigration office.”
China’s long arm in Southeast Asia
Human rights lawyer Lu is now being held in the Xindu Detention Center in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan. He was repatriated to China in early September after being arrested in Laos en route to join his family in the United States.
His detention in Laos and subsequent repatriation is another example of transnational “long-arm” law enforcement by Beijing, rights activists and commentators have warned.
A number of prominent activists have also been sent back from Thailand to China, which has increased the pursuits of dissidents and peaceful activists even when they have fled overseas.
Chinese journalist Li Xin and human rights defender Tang Zhishun were kidnapped in Thailand and Myanmar respectively, while Hong Kong bookseller Gui Minhai was taken from his holiday home in Phuket, Thailand.
Another Chinese national, Wang Jianye, was executed after being extradited from Thailand in 1995 despite assurances that he wouldn’t face the death penalty.
And in July 2018, authorities in the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing jailed rights activist Dong Guangping and political cartoonist Jiang Yefei after they were sent home from Thailand as they were awaiting resettlement as political refugees, prompting an international outcry.
Good news
Chen received the good news on Oct. 2 when Taiwanese authorities informed him in the morning that Canadian officials would come to him later with a Canadian visa. Despite his excitement, he also took to heart Canadian officials’ caution that he didn’t disclose the information to the outside world until he landed in Canada to avoid causing complications.
He arrived at Vancouver airport on the evening of Oct. 5, and the Immigrant Services Society of British Columbia immediately arranged for him to stay in a hotel. Chen was worried that he would not be able to pay.
When he learned that the bill would be taken care of, “I felt relieved and even more touched.” But he said that he isn’t wasting a minute even though he could relax.
Learning English. Credit: Fei Liu for RFA Apart from eating and sleeping, he spent most of the time reading the Bible and learning English. He wants to become stronger and contribute more to China’s democratic movement.
“The challenges I will face in the future are not small. For example, I need to learn English and find a job. I must first arrange my life. Only after these things are arranged can you participate in some democracy movement activities.”
Chen said that the tens of thousands of human rights fighters in China are in his mind, and he hopes that they can all work together, within and outside the wall to overthrow the totalitarian dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party.
“I hope our friends at home will take care of themselves first and wait for opportunities. We will do whatever we can abroad. Let’s work hard together for China’s freedom and democracy and the progress of China’s civilization.”
Chen also thanked the Taiwanese and Canadian governments, human rights organizations and pro-democracy activists.
Translated by Elaine Chan. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Fei Liu for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Reveal revisits a story produced in collaboration with a Guatemalan journalist who is now in prison. José Rubén Zamora was jailed last summer after his newspaper, elPeriódico, published more than 100 stories about corruption within Guatemala’s government.
Corruption is a longstanding problem in Guatemala, and it’s intertwined with U.S. policy in Central America. At times, the U.S. has had a corrupting influence on Guatemalan politics; at others, it has supported transparency. This week’s show looks at the root causes of corruption and impunity in Guatemala and how they have prompted generations of Guatemalans to flee their country and migrate north.
Veteran radio journalist Maria Martin takes us to Huehuetenango, a province near Guatemala’s border with Mexico. For decades, residents have been migrating to the U.S. to help support families struggling with poverty. We then connect the migration outflow to U.S. policy during the Cold War and its support of brutal dictatorships in Guatemala that were plagued by corruption.
Then Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes introduces us to a crusading prosecutor named Iván Velásquez. In the early 2000s, Velásquez was tasked with running an international anti-corruption commission in Guatemala, known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG. Its mandate was to root out corruption and improve the lives of Guatemalans so they wouldn’t feel compelled to leave their homes. Velásquez had a reputation for jailing presidents and paramilitaries, but met his match when he went after Jimmy Morales, a television comedian who was elected president in 2015. Morales found an ally in then-U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration helped Morales dismantle CICIG.
With CICIG gone, journalists were left to expose government corruption – journalists like Zamora, who was arrested last summer on trumped-up charges. Diaz-Cortes speaks with Zamora’s son about his father’s arrest and the state of journalism in Guatemala.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in September 2020.
Support Reveal’s journalism at Revealnews.org/donatenow
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter to get the scoop on new episodes at Revealnews.org/newsletter
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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A massive heat dome is starting to engulf the southern United States this week. It could grow to be one of the worst in the region’s history, breaking records for intensity and longevity and impacting some 50 million people in Florida, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California and Nevada. Heat domes are a key part of heat waves and have become hotter and longer due to climate change, making heat the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States. Along the Southwest border, more than 100 migrants have already died from heat this year amid the Biden administration’s continued crackdown on asylum seekers. We hear from Laurie Cantillo, a board member and volunteer with Humane Borders, which works to maintain water stations for migrants crossing the Sonoran Desert and Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument along the Arizona-Mexico border, as well as Eddie Canales, director of the South Texas Human Rights Center, who condemns the U.S.’s policy of migrant deterrence as inhumane and ineffective and says that “migrant deaths will continue to happen until we have a policy [to receive] workers … [and] to deal with the lack of human rights in their home [countries].”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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The last refugee, for now, has left the small, guano-producing state of Nauru. For a decade, the Pacific Island state served as one of Australia’s offshore prisons for refugees and asylum seekers, a cruel deterrent to those daring to exercise their right to seek asylum via the sea.
Since July 2013, 3,127 people making the naval journey to Australia to seek sanctuary found themselves in carceral facilities in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, told that they would never resettle on the Australian mainland. Such persons were duly euphemised as “transitory persons” to be hurried on to third country destinations, if not returned to their country of origin, a form of vacant reasoning typical of a callous bureaucracy.
The wisdom here was that other countries would not only be more suitable for such persons, but keener candidates to pull their weight in terms of processing and accepting refugees. For the Australian Commonwealth, outsourcing responsibilities from protecting citizens to shielding vulnerable arrivals from harm, has become a matter of dark habit.
Many of those remaining refugees held on the Australian mainland are the subjects of acute care, and all await transfer to third countries such as Canada under its private sponsorship program, the United States, New Zealand or other destinations.
In the meantime, 80 remain in PNG. The situation there is marred by a fundamental legal peculiarity. In October 2017, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea found the Manus Island Centre to be both illegal and unconstitutional. (PNG, unlike Australia, has a constitution prohibiting violations of personal liberty, even for non-PNG nationals.) Its closure led to the removal of the detainees to various transition centres devoid of basic amenities, including water, electricity and medical support.
Both PNG and Australia proceeded to squabble over responsibility, despite the obvious fact that the latter exercises effective control over the facilities and those being held in them. Emilie McDonnell of Human Rights Watch deems it indisputable “that Australia bears primary responsibility for those in offshore detention under its policies and has an ongoing legal duty to find a durable solution.”
The offshore concentration camp system established and prosecuted by respective federal governments has become the envy for autocrats, populists and reactionaries the world over. Fact-finding missions have been made by European Union member states. The model is mesmerising officials in the UK. Its credentials of cruelty and suffering are beyond doubt: 14 deaths since 2012, marked by gross medical neglect, suicide and murder by overly enthusiastic guards. Spokesperson for the Refugee Action Collective, Ian Rintoul, suggested that the legacy on Nauru “will forever stain the record of both sides of Australian politics”.
The absence of any refugee inmates in Nauru’s detention facility does not herald its closure. Far from it: the Albanese government has, according to Federal Budget figures, promised to spend A$486 million this year on the facility.
The Department of Home Affairs continues to tersely state that the position of the government “on maritime smuggling and irregular maritime ventures has not changed. Any person entering Australia by boat without a valid visa will be returned or taken to a regional processing country for protection claims assessment. Unauthorised maritime arrivals will not settle in Australia.”
For anyone concerned about the welfare of such persons held in captivity, the department makes a feeble assurance: “All transitory persons in Nauru reside in community accommodation and have access to health and welfare services. Transitory persons have work rights and can operate businesses.” These people have evidently not been to the prison idyll they so praise. But not to worry, a wounded conscience could also be put to rest by the fact that there were “currently no minors under regional processing arrangements” on the island.
In Senate estimates, it was also revealed that the government would continue forking out A$350 million annually to maintain the Nauru facility as a “contingency” for any future arrivals. According to a spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs, the processing centre was “ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals, future-proofing Australia’s response to maritime people-smuggling”. And so, old canards are recycled in their staleness and counterfeit quality.
Another unsavoury aspect to this needless cost to the Australian budget is the recipient of such taxpayer largesse. The Albanese government has an ongoing contract with the US prison company, Management and Training Corporation (MTC), which is responsible for running the facilities till September 2025 at the cost of A$422 million.
MTC has a spotty resume, though it trumpets its record as a “leader in social impact”. Impact is certainly not an issue, if maladministration, wrongful death, poor medical care and a failing performance in rehabilitation count in the equation. In 2015, then Arizona governor Dough Ducey cancelled MTC’s contract after a withering state department of corrections report into a riot at Kingman prison identifying “a culture of disorganisation, disengagement and disregard for state policies”. As a 2021 lawsuit filed in the District Court of the Southern District of California pungently alleged, MTC “is a private corporation that traffics in human captivity for profit.”
The very fact that MTC Australia advertises itself as a provider of “evidence-based rehabilitation programs and other services to approximately 1,000 male inmates in Australia” begs that old question as to why they need to oversee refugees and asylum seekers in the first place. But the answer is glaringly evident: anyone daring to make the perilous journey across the seas to the world’s largest island continent are seen as presumptively criminal, trafficked by actual criminals. Such a sickness of attitude and policy continues to keep the Australian political imagination captive and defiant before law and decency.
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Three Uyghur brothers who escaped from China’s far western Xinjiang province a decade ago – and have been detained in India ever since – are aiming to seek asylum in Canada, their lawyer said.
After 10 years of being detained in India and unsuccessfully seeking asylum there, they face the growing prospect of being deported to China, said their lawyer, Muhammed Shafi Lassu.
“This (Indian) government feels threatened by China, which is why they are hesitant to release these individuals and grant them political asylum, which they are actively avoiding,” Lassu told Radio Free Asia in an interview last week. “In a way, they prefer to keep them detained.”
Since their arrest in 2013 in the northern India-administered region of Jammu & Kashmir, the brothers – Adil, Abduhaliq and Abdusalam Tursun – have been moved around to various detention centers in Kashmir. They are now being held in a prison in Jammu city, Lassu said.
Lassu said that if any country were to offer the three Tursun brothers political asylum, he would petition the Supreme Court of India to seek their release.
In February, Canada offered to resettle 10,000 Uyghur refugees, giving them new hope.
To help people apply for asylum, a humanitarian group called the Canadian Uyghur Rights Advocate Project has set up an online application that Lassu said he plans to use on the brothers’ behalf.
Hopefully that will bring better results than his previous attempts to write the Canadian government to request asylum, which have not elicited any response, he said.
Lassu said he also wrote to several Arab countries on behalf of the brothers, but said officials there “showed no concern for the violation of human rights.”
The United States and the United Nations have urged against the repatriation of Uyghur refugees to China, where there is a growing body of evidence documenting the detention of up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and others in “re-education” camps, torture, sexual abuse and forced labor.
Crossing mountains
Facing persecution from the Chinese government in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, the three Tursun brothers in 2013 – aged 16, 18 and 20 at the time – trekked through the rugged Karakoram Mountain Range and crossed into India in the Ladakh region of Kashmir.
They were apprehended by the Indo-Tibetan Armed Police Force, a division of the local Indian Border Guard Forces, and detained for about two months.
The brothers admitted to crossing the border and were transferred to a police station in Leh in Jammu, Kashmir, Lassu said. In July 2014, they were charged with illegal entry and sentenced to 18 months in prison.
But Indian authorities later re-indicted the brothers under a special security law in Kashmir and have extended their detention every six months for the last 10 years, Lassu said.
“This law is exceptionally stringent, allowing the government to detain individuals without trial,” he said.
The brothers have managed to maintain their religious worship and have learned Urdu, Hindi and English during their time in captivity, Lassu said.
“They pray five times a day in prison and read the Quran,” he said. “They fast during Ramadan. They have always maintained their religious dedication.”
Risk of deportation
They are in danger of being sent back to China, according to Akash Hassan, an independent Kashmiri journalist who has written several articles about their case.
Hassan said the Indian government has instructed “relevant authorities to initiate the repatriation process. Therefore, there is a possibility that these individuals will be sent back to China at any moment.”
Lassu said he has also reached out to the UN refugee agency, or UNHCR, for help with the asylum request.
“They emphasized that if the government officially recognizes these individuals as refugees, the UNHCR will provide them with all kinds of support and assistance,” he told RFA.
But UNHCR doesn’t have those same requirements for other refugees in India, including Rohingya refugees who began fleeing Myanmar in 2012.
RFA sent a list of questions to Rama Dwivedi of UNHCR’s office in India about the brothers’ case on June 13 but has not received a response.
Even if Lassu or another lawyer is able to bring the brothers’ case to the Supreme Court of India, it is very unlikely that the court will rule in their favor, said Hassan, the journalist.
Double standard?
India has a double standard when it comes to treatment of Uyghur and Tibetan refugees, he said.
“On one hand, India welcomes thousands of Tibetan refugees who have fled from the Chinese-controlled Tibet region, and a significant number of Tibetan refugees reside in India,” he said.
“However, the treatment of Uyghurs differs. I believe this discriminatory and disparate treatment is associated with the Muslim identity of the Uyghurs,” he said. “It appears that India, under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi, is increasingly embracing right-wing Hindu nationalism.”
The Indian government should cease returning Uyghur individuals to China and refrain from treating them as criminals, Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said to RFA in a June 13 interview.
Even though India hasn’t signed the U.N. Refugee Convention, it still has an obligation to abide by international law in cases concerning Uyghurs, she said.
Edited by Matt Reed and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Jilil Kashgary for RFA Uyghur.
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By Lydia Lewis, RNZ Pacific journalist, and Christina Persico, RNZ Pacific bulletin editor
As Australian protesters gathered outside the Brisbane detention centre calling for the freedom of a Nauru refugee, the man pleaded with authorities to release him.
Hamid has been held in a hotel room and then the detention centre for months.
“They want to kill me gradually with mental torture,” he said.
“New Zealand government, please save me from the cruel and inhuman clutches of Australian politicians,” Hamid, an Iranian who was held on Nauru for almost a decade, told RNZ Pacific.
He is one of hundreds of refugees who had sought asylum in Australia but was detained offshore.
He was brought to Australia in February 2023 for medical treatment and then kept in a hotel room in Brisbane.
“They are actually cruel. And they are actually killing me by mental torture,” Hamid said.
Other refugees released
Other refugees brought to Australia have been released from hotel detention within a week or two but not Hamid, who said he had been confined for weeks on end.“And they didn’t release me and they released everyone in front of my eyes. So what is this after 10 years? After 10 years, they are putting me in a detention centre with a lot of criminal people. What is this? It’s torture!” Hamid said.
He was held first in the Meriton Hotel, in Brisbane, and on June 7 he was transferred to the Brisbane detention centre.
A protester at Brisbane’s immigration detention centre, BITA ( Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation), on Sunday . . . “Other refugees brought to Australia have been released from hotel detention within a week.” Image: Ian Rintoul/RNZ Pacific “I’m not a criminal . . . I didn’t come to Australia illegally.
“But they keep me in detention,” Hamid said.
All meals were eaten in his room, and he was sometimes taken to the BITA Detention Centre for one hour’s exercise a day.
RNZ Pacific decided not to interview him in his fragile state while he was in isolation, but since he was moved to detention where he can exercise and walk around the compound, he wanted to speak out about his treatment.
Wish to go to NZ
“I’m sure the New Zealand government and people are lovely. And this is my wish. As soon as possible, go to New Zealand. And please do my process as soon as possible. Thank you so much,” Hamid said.He begged the New Zealand government to speed up the immigration process which he has applied for under the AUS/NZ Agreement.
“I have to support my family — my wife and youngest daughter are in Iran. And I have to support them. They are my priority. My first priority in my life is to support them. And as they put me here I cannot,” Hamid said.
Protesters at Brisbane’s immigration detention centre, BITA ( Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation), on Sunday . . . Hamid was promised he would be released from detention in Australia. Image: Ian Rintoul/RNZ Pacific Like others brought from Nauru, he was promised he would be released from detention in Australia, and was even asked whether he wanted to be released on a bridging visa or on a community detention order.
He has been awaiting news from the New Zealand government as to whether or not he will be accepted for the freedom he has waited almost a decade for.
Free Hamid rally
For the last several months, the Australian Labor government has been transferring the remaining refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru to Australia, the Refugee Action Coalition said in a statement.In December last year there were 72 people held offshore by Australia in Nauru. As of last week, 13 refugees were left but it is understood that another transfer was to be completed at the weekend.
Last Sunday, a “Free Hamid” rally was held outside the detention centre.
Hamid’s son, Arman, was released from hotel detention in Victoria in 2022 and spoke at the rally.
Ian Rintoul, spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, said the Labor government has no more excuses.
“It’s way beyond time that Hamid was freed from detention and reunited with his son,” Rintoul said.
‘Strong progress’ made on NZ resettlement deal
Australia’s Department of Home Affairs (DFAT) told RNZ Pacific in a statement that while it does not comment on individual cases, it is committed to an enduring regional processing capability in Nauru as a key pillar of “Operation Sovereign Borders’.“The enduring capability ensures regional processing arrangements remain ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals, future-proofing Australia’s response to maritime people smuggling,” the statement said.
DFAT said Australia was focused on supporting the Nauru government to resolve the regional processing caseload, and that “strong progress” had been made on the New Zealand resettlement arrangement.
“I’m so tired of the Australian government, just the government, you know, not the people,” Hamid said.
Immigration New Zealand has told RNZ Pacific it is working as fast as it could to get refugees to New Zealand under the AUS/NZ deal which aims to settle up to 150 refugees each year for three years.
Year one ends this month, on June 30.
Hamid hopes to be one of those included in this year’s intake.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
Two banners and candles at the gates of a refugee detention centre during a candlelight vigil in Brisbane. Asanka Brendon Ratnayake/Anadolu Agency/AFP/RNZ Pacific This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
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Performance artist and social media personality Chen Shaotian, also known as Brother Tian, is hoping to apply for political asylum in the United States this week after documenting his hazardous trek through the Central American rainforest.
“Ladies and gentlemen! I have arrived in Quito!” the bearded, cigarette-smoking Chen tells his online audience in a video clip dated May 17 as he arrived in the Ecuadorian capital to embark on the overland leg of his journey to the United States, known in China as “walking the line.”
Chen, who has previously served a 14-month jail term for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party on social media, proceeded to upload video clips along every stage of his trip, including a hazardous trek led by people-smugglers across a rainforest that took two days.
“I was lucky – it took some people four-and-a-half days,” Chen, who also sports a massive medallion emblazoned with the Chinese character for “dream,” a likely satire on President Xi Jinping’s slogan “the Chinese dream,” said after emerging from the jungle.
“One old lady had to be carried out of there on a stretcher after paying US$120 to the snakehead [people smugglers],” he said.
‘From all over the world’
Tian arrived in Quito via Turkey, joining around 200 other fellow travelers from China who had chosen to “walk the line.”
“There were families, single people, from Fujian, Shandong … Xinjiang, people from all over [China],” he said. “There were also … people from all over the world.”
Chen’s trip took him through bus stations, border checkpoints, refugee camps and other facilities that have sprung up to serve the constant stream of people heading for the United States through Central America.
“We ran into some corrupt police en route between Quito and Colombia, Nicaragua,” he said. “They wanted money from us … There were six of us Chinese, and we each gave them US$500.”
Chen said he was offered the option to pay US$1,100 more for a “luxury” route during which horses and camps were provided, as opposed to camping in the rainforest.
People make their way across a jungle river as they continue on foot to the United States. Credit: Provided by Chen Shaotian He said a lot of people were robbed along the way.
“Some people had more than US$1,000 stolen,” he said. “They told me there would be more robberies in Guatemala and Honduras, and some were saying that the Chinese were partnering up with the locals to rob [Chinese refugees].”
“They go for people with families – one guy had his credit card swiped and lost more than 200,000 yuan, (US$28,000)” he said.
The route Chen took, flying to Turkey, then to Ecuador, then northwards along the coast through Peru and Venezuela, is a common one. Many of Chen’s videos showed long lines of people lining up for buses, or to be admitted into refugee facilities along the way.
Freedom to speak out
Chen said he is hoping to apply for political asylum in the United States for one reason only: to live somewhere where there is freedom of expression.
He was jailed in March 2021 by a court in his home province of Henan after being found guilty of “picking quarrels and stirring up trouble,” a charge frequently used to target critics of the regime.
Chen’s sentence was based on more than 50 posts he made to Twitter that were deemed to be “hype about major sensitive events in China” and “political attacks.”
One video showed him astride a moped, speeding down a road wearing a face-mask blazoned with the words “evil” and “understand,” and yelling: “Understand this! Our evil government is far worse than any virus!”
Chen’s tweets had “attacked China’s political system, insulted employees of the state, caused serious damage to China’s national image and endangered its national interests,” as well as “creating serious disorder in a public place,” the court judgment said.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Gu Ting for RFA Mandarin.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Tory minister Robert Jenrick has confirmed plans to put thousands of asylum seekers into old military bases in Essex, Lincolnshire, and Sussex. Jenrick also said those held there would get the most basic housing possible. The move is being opposed by charities and local people.
The Independent’s race reporter Nadine White tweeted the news on 29 March:
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick has confirmed plans to house “several thousand” asylum seekers at former military bases in Essex and Lincolnshire and a separate site in East Sussex.
— Nadine White. (@Nadine_Writes) March 29, 2023
Military bases
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick deployed divisive rhetoric in his address to parliament, saying:
We must not elevate the wellbeing of illegal migrants above those of the British people.
This is obviously a bizarre claim considering how child poverty and homelessness have skyrocketed under the Tories.
Typically, his report to the Commons suggested that many of the people coming to the UK were economic migrants:
This government remains committed to meeting our legal obligations to those who would otherwise be destitute. But we are not prepared to go further. Accommodation for migrants should meet their essential living needs and nothing more. Because we cannot risk becoming a magnet for the millions of people who are displaced and seeking better economic prospects.
Jenrick also said that boats could be used to house asylum seekers offshore, citing other countries which did the same:
We are continuing to explore the possibility of accommodating migrants in vessels, as they are in Scotland and in the Netherlands
Opposition
However, some Tory MPs opposed the idea. Edward Leigh MP, whose Gainsborough constituency is home to the proposed RAF Scampton camp, said he would seek an injunction. Meanwhile, several local councils – including Tory-led councils – have said they will also seek injunctions. Concerns were raised about community safety and practicalities, and Jenrick confirmed that only single adult males would be held in the facilities.
The Refugee Council said:
Our response to today’s statement from the immigration minister
More than 150,000 people are living in limbo because the government has failed to run an efficient and effective asylum system, resulting in billions of pounds being wasted on using hotel accommodation. (1/8)
— Refugee Council
(@refugeecouncil) March 29, 2023Conditions
It’s also essential to consider what the conditions in these bases are going to be like. The Tories have used military bases to hold asylum detainees in recent years, with some alarming reports.
A former RAF site in Norwich temporarily housing asylum seekers has faced allegations of “poor conditions, poor food quality and mental health crises”. Moreover, the Canary has extensively documented human rights abuses at Manston in Kent, another former RAF base. And there have also been reports of appalling conditions for people living on former army barracks in Penally, Wales.
In June 2021, a number of detainees brought a case against Napier Barracks in Kent to the high court. They won after arguing that the barracks was unfit for their needs. A judge ruled that the then-home secretary Priti Patel had acted “irrationally”. The judge also that ordered a number of asylum seekers be relocated from the squalid conditions.
Slippery slope
It’s likely that Jenrick is aware of these instances of the mistreatment of asylum detainees at former military barracks, yet he still chose to announce this plan. His announcement comes on top of the Illegal Migration Act and plans to deport desperate refugees to Rwanda.
More and more, the UK’s asylum system is a playground for posturing racists playing to the very worst sections of society – and at the expense of the most vulnerable people in the world.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Harvey Milligan, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 4.0.
By Joe Glenton
This post was originally published on Canary.
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In a move that critics say will push people to attempt more dangerous border crossings, the United States and Canada on Friday announced an agreement allowing both countries to block migrants from seeking asylum at unofficial points of entry. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hosted U.S. President Joe Biden Friday in Ottawa, where the leaders announced the deal. The agreement will allow…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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He was standing before a lectern at Downing Street. The words on the support looked eerily similar to those used by the politicians of another country. According to UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, Stop the Boats was the way to go. It harked back to the same approach used by Australia’s Tony Abbott, who won the 2013 election on precisely that platform.The UK Illegal Migration Bill is fabulously own-goaled, bankrupt and unprincipled. For one thing, it certainly is a labour of love in terms of the illegal, as the title suggests. In time, the courts may well also find fault with this ghastly bit of proposed legislation, which has already sailed through two readings in the Commons and resting in the Committee stage.
On Good Morning Britain, Home Secretary Suella Braverman had to concede she was running “novel arguments” about dealing with such irregular migration, not making mention of Australia’s own novel experiment which did, and still continues, to besmirch and taint international refugee law.
In her statement on whether the bill would be consistent with the European Convention of Human Rights, enshrined by the UK Human Rights Act, Braverman was brazen to the point of being quixotic: “I am unable to make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with the Convention rights, but the Government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the Bill.”
The long title of the bill does not even bother to conceal its purposes. It makes “provision for and in connection with the removal from the United Kingdom of persons who have entered or arrived in breach of immigration control”. It furnishes a detention regime, deals with unaccompanied children, makes some remarks about “victims of slavery or human trafficking” and, more to the point makes “provision about the inadmissibility of certain protection and certain human rights claims relating to immigration”.
The central purpose of the bill is to destroy the very basis of seeking asylum in Britain, along with the process that accompanies it. Much of this is inspired by the fact that the United Kingdom does not do the business of processing asylums particularly well. Glorious Britannia now receives fewer applications for asylum than Germany, France or Spain. Despite having fewer numbers, its backlog remains heftier than any of those three states.
The proposed instrument essentially declares illegal in advance any unauthorised arrival, an absurd proposition given that most asylum seekers arriving by boat will not, obviously, have the paperwork handy. (This is a nice trick borrowed from Fortress Australia.) Those seeking asylum by boat will be automatically detained for 28 days. During this time, those detained will be unable to make a legal challenge nor seek bail. After the expiration of time, a claim for bail can be made, or the Home Secretary can release them.
In truth, the authorities can refuse to process the claim, thereby deferring responsibility to some other source or agency. Dark, gloomy detention centres are promised, as are third countries such as Rwanda or a return across the English Channel back to France or another European state. Then comes the issue of return to the country of origin, a state of affairs in gross breach of the non-refoulement obligation of international refugee law. It is fantastically crude, a declaration of savage intent.
Even with these provisions, chaos is likely to ensue, given that the options are, as Ian Dunt points out, essentially off the table. The Rwandan solution has so far failed to materialise, bogged down in litigation. Were there to be any sent, these would amount to a few hundred at best and hardly arrest the tide of boat arrivals. The UK has also failed to secure return agreements with other European states. The most likely scenario: a large, incarcerated, miserable population housed in a burgeoning concentration camp system, a nodding acknowledgement to Australia’s own version used in the Pacific on Manus Island and Nauru.
Even some conservative voices have expressed worry about the nature of it. Former Tory PM Theresa May has questioned the breakneck speed with which the Bill is being debated, wondering if Sunak and company are acting in undue haste to supersede fresh and as yet untested legislation. “I am concerned that the government have acted on Albania and the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, when neither has been in place long enough to be able to assess their impact. I do not expect government to introduce legislation to supersede legislation recently made, the impact of which is not yet known.”
Sadly, the entire issue of discussing the critical aspects of the bill were lost in the media firestorm caused by an innocuous tweet from England’s football darling and veteran commentator Gary Lineker. “There is no huge influx,” went the tweet. “We take far fewer refugees than other major European countries. This is just an immeasurably cruel policy directed at the most vulnerable people in language that is not dissimilar to that used by Germany in the 30s, and I’m out of order?”
According to the BBC, fast becoming a fiefdom of Tory regulation, he was. Suspension from the Match of the Day followed. Within a few days, a humiliated management had to concede defeat and accept his return to the program. Solidarity for Lineker had been vast and vocal, though much of it seemed to be focused on his shabby treatment rather than the asylum seeker issue. In terms of defeating this bill, such debates will do little to box the demons that are about to be unleashed.
The post Trashing Asylum: The UK’s Illegal Migration Bill first appeared on Dissident Voice.
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.The United Nations’ children’s agency on Friday joined critics of a proposed British law aimed at stopping migrants arriving by small boats, saying it was “deeply concerned” about its impact on minors.
Jon Sparkes, head of United Nations Children’s Fund in the UK, said the bill could deny children and families the chance to seek safety:
For almost all children fleeing conflict and persecution there is no safe and legal route into the UK.
The bill was presented on Tuesday by PM Rishi Sunak’s Tory government. It would ban people who have arrived in the country illegally from seeking asylum. Sparkes said:
It is not clear how this bill will be compatible with existing UK government duties to act in the best interests of the child, and it is questionable whether the removal of a child to a third country, following a perilous journey to the UK, could ever be in their best interest.
Defending children’s rights
Sparkes called on the British government:
to urgently clarify how it intends to ensure the safety and well-being of children with this bill, and how it will respect its obligations regarding the defence of children’s rights.
45,000 migrants arrived in the UK last year by crossing the English Channel on small boats.
According to official figures, 17% of people who took the Channel route to the UK since 2018 are children and minors. Sparks said:
UNICEF UK maintains that the creation of safe and legal routes must be part of any compassionate and effective response to reducing the use of unsafe routes
Britain has obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). It must avoid putting people at risk of torture or other forms of inhuman or degrading treatment. The UK’s own 1998 Human Rights Act also offers asylum-seekers various protections.
In a note to MPs at the beginning of the 66-page bill, home secretary Suella Braverman herself acknowledged that she was “unable” to assess that its provisions are compatible with the ECHR.
Now, yet again, the Tories face censure for their inhumane policies towards desperate people – this time, children.
Featured image via Wikimedia Commons/Alisdare Hickson, cropped to 770 x 403, licenced under CC BY 2.0.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
By Joe Glenton
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Britain’s plan to refuse to allow asylum seekers arriving in small boats the right to claim asylum may breach its international obligations. This was according to the EU’s home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, on 9 March. Johansson said she had spoken to home secretary Suella Braverman to discuss the planned legislation, which may breach European and UN conventions.
On 8 March, Braverman told ITV News that she had invited Johansson to study the UK proposal in more detail. However, she stressed:
We are no longer members of the European Union and so we are free to determine our own borders and migration policy.
PM Rishi Sunak also threatened to “take back control of our borders once and for all” by detaining and deporting any migrants caught crossing the Channel from France or Belgium in small boats.
Due to the UK’s already-unfit asylum system, the backlog of asylum claims now exceeds 160,000. The crossings, many organised by smuggling gangs, are incredibly dangerous. In November 2021, at least 27 people drowned in a single incident.
Macron-Sunak summit
Opponents, rights groups, and the United Nations say the new draft law would turn Britain into an international pariah under European and UN conventions on asylum.
Unperturbed, Sunak hopes to strike a deal with France to halt the asylum seekers on its coast. The PM will meet President Emmanuel Macron at a summit in Paris on Friday. An aide to the French leader told reporters the pair were working on a deal to increase the border-policing resources.
However, arriving at the Brussels meeting, French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin warned the proposed UK law could harm relations. He also stressed that Britain should work with the EU to better co-ordinate migrant policy.
Darmanin said Macron and Sunak would discuss the legislation on Friday. He stressed that the goal should be a treaty between the UK and the EU to provide legal access routes for migrants. Further, Britain also needs a system to return those refused asylum.
The EU ministers, meanwhile, were to discuss their own differences about how to better divide the task of sharing migrant arrivals and managing asylum claims
‘A clear breach’
On Tuesday the UN refugee agency UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) said the plan removes:
the right to seek refugee protection in the United Kingdom for those who arrive irregularly, no matter how genuine and compelling their claim may be.
By denying protection to asylum seekers and even the opportunity to put forward their case, the plan “would be a clear breach” of the international Refugee Convention, it said.
Campaign group Refugee Action also pointed out that the plans are unlikely even to reduce the number of refugees. It stressed that:
These deterrence policies will never work because a tiny minority of people fleeing war and persecution around the world will always want to come to the UK to seek safety.
Most have powerful reasons to want to come here that we can all understand – they have family here, or friends here, or community here. The Home Office’s own research has backed this up.
Additional reporting via Agence France-Presse
Featured image via Youtube screengrab
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Amid a surge of migrants arriving at the United States’ southern border the Biden administration has announced a slate of new enforcement measures, including a new parole program that would permit thirty thousand Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans to apply for asylum in the United States per month. But the new measure would also expel any migrants from those countries who attempt to cross the border under the controversial Trump-era policy known as Title 42.
The new measures are meant to decrease the number of migrants at the border; Biden said most are arriving from the four countries.
“My message is this: If you’re trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti … do not, do not just show up at the border,” President Joe Biden said in his January 5 announcement. “Stay where you are and apply legally from there.”
But according to immigrant rights advocates, these new measures miss the point of what asylum is and misunderstand the realities that migrants who are seeking protection face.
“Parole isn’t something you can exchange for asylum because asylum was designed for people who can’t wait to apply for protection from where they are but need to flee and come to the border,” Yael Schacher, an immigration historian and director for the Americas and Europe with Refugees International, tells The Progressive.
“Parole isn’t something you can exchange for asylum because asylum was designed for people who can’t wait to apply for protection from where they are but need to flee and come to the border.”
“You can only apply for asylum at the border or within the United States,” she explains. “And so these parole programs are a lifeline in some senses… [but] for people who are in immediate danger, that’s not possible. And asylum was designed again as a way to be able to flee your home country and go to another country, go to the border of another country, and not be returned from there, but be given a chance to seek protection there.”
Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraugans, and Venezuelans have made up the majority of migrants seeking to reach the United States in recent months. Most of them have been forced to flee their homes due to political crises, so applying for parole from abroad is difficult and risky. Many were forced to flee their home countries years prior.
The new measures have led to an outpouring of criticism for the Biden Administration, comparing these policies to the anti-immigrant measures of the Trump Administration.
The Biden administration’s announcement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 on December 27 to maintain Title 42 to block some migrants’ access to asylum and to rapidly expel them from the country until at least June 2023. The continuation of the measure—a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention policy which proponents argued would slow the spread of COVID-19—led to outcry by immigration activists in the U.S.
“It’s a political decision,” Jenn Budd, a former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent turned immigrant rights activist, tells The Progressive. Budd detailed her experiences working for CBP in a 2022 memoir, Against the Wall.
“There’s no health reason to have Title 42 [in place]. It’s actually an antiquated response,” she says. “It was put in place to basically not just shutter the asylum system, but to literally blow it up; so it couldn’t be easily put back together. And if Trump had won [re-election], they would have just kept it.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to maintain Title 42 was in response to a lawsuit filed by nineteen Republican-controlled States, which challenged a lower court’s decision to lift the measure on December 21.
“We’re at this point where any change in federal policy that can remotely be seen, portrayed, or thought of as lifting restrictions on the border or having a fiscal burden on any states somehow gives the states standing to sue and prevent immigration change,” Schacher says. “From a historical point of view, this is crazy because we elected a new president to change immigration policy, and the courts are essentially saying you cannot change that [policy].”
She adds: “And Congress, unfortunately, is just doing nothing.”
This challenge by Republican-controlled states comes as the controversial measure was declared unnecessary by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in April 2022. Data from the Customs and Border Protection suggests the actual application of the measure is in decline. The continuation of Title 42 and Biden’s expansion are the latest political whiplash felt by migrants at the border, who have seen U.S. policy repeatedly shift, leaving them in limbo.
“It’s just perpetuating the confusion,” Schacher says.
Since March 2020, migrants, largely from Mexico and Central America, were expelled 2.4 million times under Title 42. Some who managed to make it across the border were then placed on buses and transported across the country in political stunts—including on Christmas Eve 2022, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent multiple buses to Vice President Kamala Harris’s house.
Yet Title 42 and other controversial measures such as the Trump Administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, have had little effect on discouraging migration.
“It’s not really stopping the migration,” Schacher says. “None of this has ever stopped it.”
As the United States has continued to expel migrants, makeshift migrant camps have popped up across Mexico. These measures have also forced migrants into taking more dangerous routes in the hopes of crossing the border.
But migrants continue to arrive at the U.S. border. The U.S. embassies in Guatemala and El Salvador regularly post warnings against migrating on their Twitter accounts, but these campaigns are unlikely to be seen by those most likely to migrate. Many of these messages use problematic images from Customs and Border Protection agents that dehumanize migrants.
“[These are] trophy shots,” Budd says. “When the U.S. Embassy is doing it, what they’re showing you is they’re condoning the violence.”
A culture of racism permeates the Customs and Border Protection agency, Budd explains.
“We are taught that they’re all invaders,” Budd says. “[That migrants] are coming across to take what is ours, and to do harm to our children, and our country. And we are, as the Border Patrol, the last thing defending the United States. And people who love migrants are just a bunch of idiots and don’t know the truth.”
There is the presence of far-right elements within the Border Patrol, and a culture of impunity has spread within the agency. As Budd points out, Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council (the Border Patrol agent’s union) has reproduced and spread the “great replacement” theory—an anti-immigrant conspiracy theory.
“It’s all just absolutely completely racist bullshit,” Budd says.
But as immigrant rights groups struggle with how to move forward after the continuation and now expansion of Title 42, Budd raises an important point: the discourse has brought attention to the people seeking asylum who may have otherwise been invisible.
“Before Title 42, before Trump, not too many people were looking at what asylum processes look like when you go through the ports of entry,” Budd explained. “So right now it looks like it’s extremely overwhelmed, but it only looks like that because they have the system closed down. [U.S. citizens] aren’t used to seeing this, and all of a sudden they see all these people.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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For the past several years, a patchwork of policies have illegally restricted people fleeing persecution from seeking safety at the U.S.-Mexico border. The ACLU recently won a critical lawsuit when a federal judge ordered an end to Title 42, one of the most restrictive policies, but multiple states and members of Congress are trying to keep the policy in place. At the same time, the federal government is reportedly considering resuscitating other inhumane Trump-era policies that would continue restricting access to asylum, rather than focusing on real solutions to a more fair and efficient immigration system.
As we gather together with loved ones this holiday season, and as the U.S.-Mexico border continues to make headlines, this topic may come up in conversations. To restore humanity to U.S. asylum policy, we need to center human dignity, truth, and justice in our conversations. This guide will help you do just that.
The basic facts you need to know:
Seeking asylum is a human right protected under international and U.S. laws.
People may come to the U.S. or the border to seek asylum and must prove their cases to be granted permanent protection.
Many policies threaten the human and legal right to seek asylum from persecution, but none succeed in deterring people from trying to seek protection at the border.
Despite obstacles, asylum seekers become integral members of our communities.
Money spent policing the border can be better spent establishing a fair, orderly, and welcoming asylum process.
First-hand stories of courage and survival
For those who aren’t already interested in these issues, our laws might seem abstract or arcane. One of the best ways to understand and convey their importance is by sharing the stories of people who are fighting for their right to seek asylum and are directly impacted by the policies that make headlines.
My Family Came to Seek Asylum, But Found Danger Instead
Searching for Peace: The difficult and dangerous journey to seek asylum in the United States, Part I
The history of asylum law and why it’s still critical
The right to seek asylum — or safety from persecution — in another country was born out of the tragedies of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. In its aftermath, dozens of nations committed to never again slam the door on people in need of protection. The right to asylum was enshrined in 1948’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then again in the Refugee Convention of 1951 and its 1967 Protocol.
The United States is a party to the Refugee Protocol and passed the Refugee Act of 1980 to comply with its international obligations. The Act protects people who are fleeing persecution on “account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
The Refugee Act is meant to ensure that people who seek asylum from within the U.S. or at its border are not sent back to places where they face persecution.
These protections are just as critical today. More people have been forcibly displaced from their homes due to conflict, violence, and human rights violations in recent years than at any other time since World War II.
All people fleeing persecution are allowed to seek asylum under our laws. Period.
What you need to know about policies that restrict people from seeking asylum
The “Remain in Mexico” policy, first implemented by the Trump administration, forced people to wait in dangerous conditions in Mexico while their asylum cases proceeded in the U.S. The Biden administration attempted to end this policy, and the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that it has the authority to do so.
Title 42, first implemented by the Trump administration under the guise of public health, has been used for more than two-and-a-half years to expel people fleeing violence and persecution, rather than considering their claims. Expulsions under Title 42 have led to more than 10,000 documented cases of violent attacks, including rape, torture, and abduction, and have subjected Black and LGBTQ asylum seekers to particular risks. A federal judge recently ordered its end, but some politicians are fighting to keep it in place.
So-called “deterrence” policies aim to stop people from exercising the right to seek asylum through the threat of harm or punishment, such as family separation, mandatory detention, and criminalization.
Other policies aim to prevent people from requesting asylum to begin with, such as through severe metering or unlawfully denying asylum to people entering the U.S. at the Southern border who did not first apply for asylum in Mexico or another third country they transited through.
American Civil Liberties Union
What you need to know about the impact of these restrictive policies
These policies subject people who have already endured violence and persecution to further harm, including rape, torture, and abduction in many cases, by denying them the chance to seek safety and sending them back into harm’s way.
Although elected officials have claimed these policies discourage migrants from coming to the border, evidence shows they do not stop people from seeking safety and ultimately create more disorder.
Expulsions under Title 42, for example, have the opposite effect of deterring people. They have encouraged people seeking protection to repeatedly attempt to cross the border to find safety.
Even after imposing the strictest and most punitive rules against asylum seekers, President Trump faced sharp increases in the numbers of migrants at the border, at that time the highest numbers in over a decade.
How fear-mongering is used to win support for these policies
Anti-immigrant politicians continue to peddle falsehoods and racist tropes about an “invasion” to instill fear and win support for harmful policies. Ahead of the midterms, America’s Voice, an immigration advocacy organization, identified over 3,200 different paid communications that employed anti-immigrant attacks.
Governors of Florida, Arizona, and Texas have used asylum seekers as political props, placing them on flights and buses to communities like Martha’s Vineyard, to make headlines and perpetuate a fear-based narrative around the border.
Despite these attacks, the vast majority of Americans support asylum rights. According to a new poll conducted by the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California, San Diego, nearly three-quarters of Americans (73.4 percent) agree that the United States should provide access to the U.S. asylum system to people fleeing persecution and/or violence.
What we really need at the border, and how to fund it
(Credit: John Lamparski/NurPhoto via AP)
We need a more efficient, humane, and welcoming system at the border for people seeking asylum.
Much of the money Congress now spends on a bloated Border Patrol police force should be spent instead on humane reception and screening of people at the border and on making sure our immigration agencies and federal courts have enough employees and judges to decide asylum claims in a fair, orderly, and timely manner.
This money could also be used to support people in reaching family members or sponsors in the locations where they will wait for the government to decide their claims and to more quickly process work permits for asylum seekers so they can support themselves and contribute to their communities. One recent study estimated that on average, an asylum seeker contributes over $19,000 per year to the U.S. economy, and that a 25 percent reduction in the number of all people seeking asylum in the country would cause an economic loss of $20.5 billion over a five-year period.
How you can join the fight to protect the right to seek asylum
The policies discussed in this guide present a serious threat to the future of asylum rights, but we’ll continue to fight back through our ongoing litigation, in the halls of Congress, and through public education. And we’re not stopping there. We’re fighting for a fundamentally more humane and welcoming system at the border for people seeking asylum — and you can, too.
Here are four ways you can join the fight to protect the right to seek asylum no matter where you live.
Use this guide to speak to your friends and family and educate them on the importance of protecting asylum rights.
Share why you support welcoming people with humanity and dignity on Soapbox and tag your members of Congress.
Send a message to Congress telling them not to extend Title 42.
Visit the ACLU Border Humanity Project — a campaign to fight for humane border policies — for other ways to get involved.
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Refugee activists gathered on World Refugee Day to call for permanent protection for refugees and an end to the country’s racist and cruel migration policies. Andrea Bortoli reports.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
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Shortly after taking office, Joe Biden sought to cancel the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy (formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP). Under the policy, asylum seekers who leave a third country and travel through Mexico to the U.S. border are forced to stay in Mexico while awaiting a court hearing on their asylum petitions. Many of the tens of thousands who have been compelled to wait in Mexico have become victims of kidnapping, sexual assault and torture as they wait in crude encampments.
On April 27, Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, testified before the House Appropriations Subcommittee and the House Homeland Security Committee that under Trump’s Remain in Mexico program, 1,500 people were murdered, tortured, raped or were victims of other serious crimes.
The Remain in Mexico program is basically a “sham,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior policy counsel at the American Immigration Council, told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!. “Less than 1% of people put into the program who were forced to have their cases heard at the border ever won, ever won their case, compared to 15 to 20% of people inside the United States.”
But in response to a lawsuit filed by the states of Texas and Missouri, a Trump-appointed federal district court judge issued a nationwide injunction forbidding Biden from ending the Remain in Mexico program. A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district judge’s ruling, saying the Biden administration’s initial rationale for ending the program was inadequate. In August, a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court refused to suspend the injunction while it reviewed the case.
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Biden v. Texas on April 26. Several members of the court seemed torn about whether the Biden administration could end the program. Some said they doubted that Congress meant to permit the release of large numbers of asylum seekers into the United States. Others expressed skepticism that a federal judge could require the Biden administration to continue the program since it requires the agreement of Mexico and the Constitution reserves the conduct of foreign policy to the executive branch.
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court that Mayorkas had decided to end the Remain in Mexico program after concluding that its benefits “were outweighed by its domestic, humanitarian, and foreign policy costs.” Prelogar said Mayorkas exercised “his statutory discretion to make a policy judgment.”
The members of the court tried to reconcile language in three different sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act that were enacted at different times. One section says the Department of Homeland Security “shall detain” undocumented people (with some narrow exemptions). Another section states that the Department of Homeland Security “may” return asylum seekers to Mexico or Canada (if they arrived by land) while they wait for the processing of their asylum claim. And a third section provides for parole and bond for asylum seekers on a case-by-case basis who would be temporarily released into the United States for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or if there is a “significant public benefit.”
Neither Texas nor the Biden administration disputed the fact that no administration has ever complied with the congressional mandate to detain all undocumented immigrants — due to a shortage of beds in detention facilities. As Prelogar told the court, 220,000 migrants were apprehended near the U.S. border in March but there were only 32,000 beds in the detention facilities. “No one disputes that the [Department of Homeland Security] does not have sufficient detention capacity” for all the migrants, she said.
Some right-wing members of the court appeared to lean against allowing the administration to end the Remain in Mexico program. Clarence Thomas said the “shall detain” provision creates a presumption in favor of detention, meaning that the administration should detain asylum seekers rather than release them on parole or send them to Mexico. Samuel Alito pointed out that the government had argued in another case that “shall be detained” created a mandate for detention. Brett Kavanaugh was skeptical that Congress anticipated that hundreds of thousands of undocumented people would be released into the United States.
But Kavanaugh asserted that the Department of Homeland Security has determined that permitting noncitizens who are “not too dangerous” into the U.S. to free up detention space for those with criminal records constitutes a significant public benefit. Amy Coney Barrett appeared to echo Kavanaugh’s sentiments. She told Texas Solicitor General Judd Stone that if the administration is correct in saying that the need to prioritize bed spaces in detention centers constitutes a significant public benefit, “you lose, right?”
Sonia Sotomayor observed that the “shall detain” language had been in effect for more than a century and that no administration had ever “attempted to detain every single illegal immigrant.” She suggested that “we should accept what the practices have been through generations of presidents.”
Elena Kagan also appeared to favor allowing the administration to end the Remain in Mexico program. She said that requiring the continuation of the program would be “to basically tell the executive how to implement its foreign and immigration policy.” Kagan told Stone, “You’re putting the secretary’s immigration decisions in the hands of Mexico” because the U.S. can only return asylum seekers to Mexico with the cooperation of the Mexican government. “What do you mean it doesn’t require negotiation with the foreign power?” Kagan asked Stone. “What are we supposed to do? Just drive truckloads of people into Mexico and leave them without negotiating with Mexico?”
Chief Justice John Roberts did not signal how he might vote in this case. But when Stone said that requiring the continuation of the Remain in Mexico program would mean there would be fewer violations of federal immigration law, Roberts retorted, “I think it’s a bit much for Texas to substitute itself for the secretary and say that you may want to terminate this, but you have to keep it because it will reduce to a slight extent your violations of the law.”
In her rebuttal, Prelogar commented on the “extraordinary nature of the district court’s injunction in this case and particularly with respect to its effects on foreign relations.” To return asylum seekers to Mexico pursuant to the Remain in Mexico program necessitates a “massive cross-border program,” requiring housing, work authorization, protection against predatory gang and cartel violence, and access to lawyers, she noted. “The idea that there is a single district court in Texas that is mandating those results … shows that something has powerfully gone awry here. This is not how our constitutional structure is supposed to operate and this is not the statute that Congress drafted.”
We will know the court’s decision by the end of June.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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