No Human Is Illegal: An Attorney on the Front Lines of the Immigration War by J. J. Mulligan Sepulveda

Author:J. J. Mulligan Sepulveda
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Melville House
Published: 2019-01-22T00:00:00+00:00

Monday, First Week

The immigration law I practiced in New York turned out to be very different from the work I came to learn at the detention center. Rather than immigrants who had been living undocumented in the United States or who were recently released from detention to petition for their right to stay, the inmates at Karnes City Residential Center were people who had been picked up by ICE at the border, often turning themselves in, preferring La Migra to an anonymous death in the desert. Women traveling with their children were sent to special and separate detention centers, like the one in Karnes City. Once there, if they stated a fear of returning to their country, they would receive either a Credible Fear Interview (CFI) or Reasonable Fear Interview (RFI)—the former being for first-time detainees without permission to enter the United States and carrying a lower standard for approval, the latter for those who have previously been deported—to be conducted by an asylum officer. The asylum officer is supposed to write everything down on special forms and read it back to the immigrant, who is then given copies of these documents. Sometimes there are translators, other times the asylum officer speaks minimal Spanish. If either the CFI or RFI come back as negative, meaning that the asylum officer does not believe that the immigrant has a reasonable or credible fear of returning to her country of origin, the immigrant can ask for an immigration judge to review the decision of the asylum officer. If the immigration judge denies the case—thus affirming the negative decision of the asylum officer—the immigrant has one last avenue, called the Request for Reconsideration (RFR), a discretionary Hail Mary, which asks the asylum office to reconsider her original, and now potentially final, decision in the case.

Preparing for the initial CFI or RFI is something that many non-lawyer volunteers assist with. For lawyers, our main job is when the immigrant asks an immigration judge to review the negative decision of the asylum office. In that case, the immigration judge reviews the record to see if there is a significant possibility that, were the negative CFI or RFI to be vacated, the immigrant could establish eligibility for asylum. In that instance, when the immigrant asks for a review of a negative CFI or RFI, the attorneys representing the immigrant mother and child have at most seven days. The regulations state that the immigration judge must conclude the review, when practicable, within twenty-four hours, but no later than seven days.

The average time from when we would first meet with a detainee to when we would appear with them before an immigration judge was three days. That may seem like a good amount of time on its face, but Maria Rogelia, the woman I had met on my first day at Karnes, was due for a hearing on Thursday, after receiving her negative CFI results the day before I arrived. Maria Rogelia was from Guerrero, a state in southwest Mexico, once known for its resort town of Acapulco, an Elvis Presley favorite.

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