Letters to the Editor 11/14/18

Posted 11/14/18

Faces of asylum Recently, my daughter worked for five days as a legal volunteer at an ICE detention center. Here are some of her observations. The asylum seekers are almost all women and their …

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Letters to the Editor 11/14/18

Posted

Faces of asylum

Recently, my daughter worked for five days as a legal volunteer at an ICE detention center. Here are some of her observations.

The asylum seekers are almost all women and their children. They typically arrive at the border and plead for help, or cross the border and surrender to the border patrol. In either case they are arrested, put in holding cells, then moved to a family detention center.

Currently, the people arriving are primarily from Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala and El Salvador, and have remarkable stories of desperate struggles for their lives and the lives of their children. For instance:

One received death threats against her six-year-old son from gangs because her policeman husband had made gang-related arrests. Her husband fled the country, while she and her boy relocated to another village. When the threats continued, they too fled.

Another mother worked as a nanny. Gang extortionists threatened to kill her daughter if she refused to pay them half her earnings. She changed her phone number and relocated, but in the interim the gangs murdered her uncle in front of his wife and daughter because he, too, had refused to pay. The town had no police force, and altering her work schedule did not stop the threats. Finally, she and her daughter left the country.

In order to qualify for a more formal asylum hearing, the detainees must explain to the asylum officers why their lives would be at risk were they forced to return home. If the officer is convinced that their fears are credible, then they are assigned a court date. Many are tracked by ICE via an ankle bracelet until that court date. Virtually anyone who misses that date will be a priority for deportation and will be unable to attain legal status.

These are the most abused, lost and downtrodden of humanity and need our assistance, not our fear or scorn.

John Pace

Honesdale, PA

Wayne County 4 Action

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