President Obama recently asked Congress for authority to treat Central American children in the same way the government treats Mexican children. The Asylum Reform and Border Protection Act (H.R. 5137), introduced today by Reps. Chaffetz (R-UT) and Goodlatte (R-VA), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, goes beyond the President’s request. The bill eliminates any sort of review for juvenile victims of trafficking and the requirement that an immediate return of a child be voluntary.
Under current law, Mexican children may be immediately removed if they are:
- Not severe victims of trafficking,
- Not asylum seekers, or
- If they accept voluntary departure, a procedure by which the child admits that he or she has no right to be here and leaves in lieu of formal removal proceedings.
Under the proposed H.R. 5137, all children caught at the border would be subject to expedited removal, a process under which they can be removed without a hearing before a judge if they have no credible fear of persecution (8 USC 1225(b)). This process triggers an automatic 5-year bar on legal reentry (8 USC 1182(a)(9)(A)(i)). Any child caught at the border may be detained until his asylum application is adjudicated. It extends the current arbitrary one year deadline on asylum applications for adults to children.
Unaccompanied children could be detained or released under the bill while waiting for final approval of their asylum application, but the bill redefines “unaccompanied” to mean that once a child has been released to a parent, they no longer qualify for release, which means they would head right back into detention.
Worse, H.R. 5137 raises the initial standard of review for all asylum claims for children. Rather than going before a judge simply by asserting a fear, they would actually have to convince an asylum officer that their claim was “more probable than not” to be factual in order to even to go before a judge. Raising the standard that high for an initial review would bar many legitimate asylum seekers.
Even worse, H.R. 5137 allows children apprehended at the border to be removed without any asylum screening to a “safe third party country” (i.e. Mexico) without an agreement from that country, as is required by current law. If H.R. 5137 becomes law, the U.S. government would immediately start dumping Honduran, El Salvadoran, and Guatemalan children into Mexico.
The crisis along the Southwest border has prompted many Americans to want all unlawful immigrants and children removed. But this bill goes far beyond that desire. H.R. 5137 would remove many foreigners who have legal rights under our current immigration laws. H.R. 5137 would be a disastrous blow to America’s asylum system and send numerous children with legitimate asylum claims back into danger.