About 200 members of a migrant caravan that traveled north through Mexico, drawing the ire of President Donald Trump, plan to come to a San Diego port of entry today and ask for asylum.

At its largest, the caravan reportedly numbered about 1,200 people, mostly from Central American countries like Honduras, where many have fled violence that activists attribute, at least in part, to U.S. involvement.

After the Mexican government issued temporary travel documents to members of the caravan, some came ahead of the group to the U.S.-Mexico border to ask for asylum. Others planned to resettle in Mexico.

Those that remained in the group — which numbers now about 345 people — arrived by bus this week in Tijuana. Both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security have pledged to send additional staff to the border to process those claiming asylum as quickly as possible.


Generally, when asylum seekers come to the U.S. border, they begin a process that can take months or even years to resolve. Many spend most, if not all, of that time in detention facilities run by private prison companies contracted with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

They are interviewed and screened by multiple federal agencies, and at the end, they have to prove to judges that their stories meet the requirements under asylum law to be granted protection.

“They can expect to be put through a very confusing process,” said Bardis Vakili, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who conducts legal orientations at the Imperial Regional Detention Facility. “They can expect to have things not explained to them very well in a language they don’t understand for weeks or months. They can expect to find great difficulty in getting legal help to make their case.”

The Trump administration has called on Congress to end “loopholes” in the asylum process, calling out court rulings and laws that dictate how children and families who arrived together move through the system. Trump also tweeted that he’d told DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen not to allow “large caravans” to enter the U.S.


“It is a disgrace. We are the only Country in the World so naive! WALL,” he wrote.

Under both U.S. law and international treaties that came after the Holocaust, border officials must allow people who say they’re afraid to return home to submit their claims in the asylum process.

Processing at the border

Migrants can ask for asylum at any port of entry along the U.S. border. If they come through El Chaparral to the PedWest side of the port at San Ysidro, they are stopped by security guards who make sure travelers have documentation before walking through the gate into the U.S. side of the port.


Customs and Border Protection officers take asylum seekers to a processing area for “inadmissibles,” or people who don’t have permission to enter the U.S., where they’re held in temporary cells.

California ports of entry received 17,610 inadmissibles so far in fiscal 2018, according to data from CBP. At the same point last year, 21,180 inadmissibles had arrived. The agency does not specify how many of them sought asylum.

In the processing area, officers interview the migrants. During the interview, officers are required to ask if they are afraid of going home.

If people express fear of returning to their countries, border officials notify ICE officers, who look for detention bed space to house the arrivals. People who present at the border in San Diego often go to Otay Mesa Detention Center, but if there is no room, they also go to Adelanto Detention Facility, Imperial Regional Detention Facility or farther away.


Sometimes this transfer process can take several days. Nicole Ramos, a Tijuana-based immigration attorney who focuses on asylum cases, said that clients have described to her losing sense of time in the notoriously cold holding cells.

“It’s a very disorienting place,” Ramos said.

Clients complain to her about the slim burritos they’re given for each meal while they want to transfer.

Families are taken to an ICE processing center in the federal building downtown. If processing takes multiple days, ICE sometimes uses the Quality Suites on Otay Mesa Drive to hold people overnight, according to a document obtained and published by the National Immigrant Justice Center.


The largest group held at the hotel so far in fiscal 2018 was 120 people, according to the document, and ICE has kept on average 74 people there daily.

Some asylum seekers, instead of coming to a port, cross the border between ports of entry and are caught by Border Patrol agents. Some purposefully cross where they see an agent stationed to ask for help requesting asylum. Agents call these “self-surrenders.”

Border Patrol agents, like their counterparts at ports of entry, are required to ask if people they encounter are afraid to go home.


Credible fear

Asylum seekers wait in detention for interviews with officers from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who are specially trained in evaluating cases under asylum law. Those interviews last about two hours and are usually conducted by phone.

Some detention facilities have asylum officers stationed in them, particularly those that house families since children are not allowed to stay detained beyond 20 days.

Unaccompanied children go through a slightly different process. Asylum officers interview them in person and make the first determination of whether they get asylum. If the officer does not grant asylum, then the child tries again in immigration court.


Under asylum law, an individual must have suffered persecution or fear suffering persecution because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

The “because of” is important — even if the person faces legitimate death threats at home, that person might not win an asylum case if he or she cannot show it is for one of these reasons. (There are other types of protections that have different requirements, like the Convention against Torture, that people can ask for as well.)

How this part of the law applies to Central Americans fleeing gang violence, in particular, is still up for legal debate and has evolved over time.

Asylum officers look for whether applicants’ stories are consistent, detailed and plausible based on country conditions, and they run security checks in a variety of government databases.


They check for histories that could bar an applicant from asylum, like war crimes, persecuting others or other particularly violent or serious crimes.

Supervisors review every credible fear decision before it’s sent to the asylum seeker.

For asylum officers, it’s a high pressure situation, said Michael Knowles, president of the officers’ union.

“The outcome of an officers’ decision is very consequential. For the person granted asylum, it is a new lease on life, a chance to recover after having lost everything. For the failed asylum seeker, it’s not just, ‘Oh darn, I didn’t get my visa,’ but, ‘Oh darn, I’m going to have to go back to the place I ran away from,” Knowles said.


“There’s also the high stakes of national security,” he said. “By carefully adjudicating these cases, we ensure the integrity of the program.”

The union would like to see more resources and more officers hired, especially with pressure to clear the backlog while adding more security checks. The union has also been critical of reports that some asylum seekers are turned back at the border.

“If they’re coming to seek asylum, they need to be given due process,” Knowles said. “We shouldn’t be impeded from doing our job, and those applicants should not be impeded from having their cases heard.”

People who are not found to have credible fear can have that decision reviewed by an immigration judge.


Detention and immigration court

After someone gets a positive credible fear finding, he or she receives a “Notice to Appear,” a document that schedules that person for immigration court.

The person at this point can request to be released from detention. Those who are released may be required to pay a bond or wear an ankle monitor. Under the Trump administration, most remain in custody, and even under the Obama administration, many asylum seekers spent the entire process locked up.

At the first hearing with an immigration judge, the asylum seeker receives an asylum application as well as a list of free and low-cost attorneys.


Since it is civil court, not criminal court, asylum seekers must find their own attorneys. Many cannot afford the cost of an immigration attorney, and because there are a limited number who take on cases pro bono, asylum seekers often represent themselves in court.

Studies have shown that would-be immigrants are much more likely to win their cases if they have lawyers.

At the next hearing — or sometimes a couple of hearings later — the asylum seeker turns in the application. The judge reads a warning that frivolous asylum applications can make someone ineligible for immigrating to the U.S. for life. Then the judge schedules a private hearing with the asylum seeker, where the person presents evidence to support his or her story.

Waiting for hearings takes at least months. Immigration court has a backlog nationwide of close to 700,000 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University. In fiscal 2016, immigration courts nationwide received more than 63,700 defensive asylum cases, a 221 percent increase from about 19,800 in fiscal 2012, according to data from the Executive Office for Immigration Review.


At or after the individual hearing, the judge makes a decision. Either side can appeal the case, which can extend an asylum seeker’s time in custody.

Nationally, about 31 percent of the defensive cases that were decided were given asylum in fiscal 2016, but that rate varied widely by court location.

A woman from Rwanda who won her asylum case last year said she understands that the U.S. needs to protect itself but that the process is hard on asylum seekers. She didn’t know she was going to be imprisoned when she arrived at the border, she said.

“It’s a mix of fear and you don’t know where you are,” said the woman, who didn’t want to be named because she worried about how people would treat her if they found out she’s an asylee. “You ask yourself what is going to happen to me. I was terrified. It’s something that is hard to explain unless you experience it. It was a horrible experience.”


Despite that struggle, she’s grateful for the opportunity to start a new life in the U.S., she said emphatically.

Recent and proposed changes

The Trump administration has proposed changes to the asylum process, saying that “loopholes” entice people without valid claims to come to the U.S.

“The department enforces and follows the laws as set forth by Congress. However, the secretary and the president have made clear that the current asylum process is rife with fraud and are working with Congress to close loopholes,” a DHS official said. “If families are seeking asylum or other legal protections, DHS encourages them to cross our border at a port of entry. Crossing the border between ports of entry is illegal and puts officers at risk.”


The administration wants to hold children in detention longer and require them to file asylum applications within one year of arriving in the U.S. It also wants Congress to pass a law that sends unaccompanied children’s cases to immigration court like the process for adults instead of going first to asylum officers, a proposal the asylum officers’ union has opposed.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has already made changes in policies at immigration courts.

He recently referred a Board of Immigration Appeals decision to himself and vacated the Board’s finding that required judges to give all asylum seekers a full hearing. That means judges may now make decisions based on asylum applications without listening to any testimony from the asylum seeker.

People who advocate for asylum seekers’ rights to protection criticized how the process worked even before the changes made under Trump.


“The system is not designed as a protection system,” said immigration attorney Ramos. “It’s designed as a mass incarceration and deportation system.”

Sessions also created quotas for immigration judges, which he has said he hopes will reduce the backlog. The immigration judges union has opposed this move, arguing that especially for asylum cases, it will require judges to make decisions too quickly given the amount of evidence involved.

Vakili, the ACLU attorney, emphasized the importance of allowing people access to a fair process.

“Nobody flees their home country and faces the risks of coming here unless things are very dangerous at home,” Vakili said. “There are significant numbers of people who face real danger if they were to be deported. To not give someone a fair shake in their case risks making mistakes when life and death is on the line.”


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Alejandro Tamayo contributed reporting.

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kate.morrissey@sduniontribune.com, @bgirledukate on Twitter