Imagine risking your life and the life of your children to travel to the US - Mexico border in order to seek asylum. You’ve presented yourself to US border officials and explained your fear of returning home. They tell you to come back for an asylum hearing, and hand you a sheet of paper with the date and time of your hearing, indecipherable and hand-written. This court date is your only shot at asylum, but you can’t even read the instructions.
This situation has happened thousands of times on our southern border to the asylum seekers forced to remain in Mexico under a policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Project Corazon and director Charlene D’Cruz have personally documented dozens of instances where these notice slips were woefully inadequate. That’s why we joined with CLINIC and 11 other border rights organizations to file an amicus brief with the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws.
The BIA is attempting to determine whether its system is constitutional and provides due process. We emphatically believe it does not, and our brief is filed with the court in order to help the judges make a decision. You can read our amicus brief here.
Asylum seekers in MPP are given a “notice to appear” that tells them when and where their hearing will be; they are also given a piece of physical paper, known as a “tear sheet” that tells them when and how to cross the border to get to court in the US. Tear sheet deficiencies that we’ve documented in the brief include:
Not containing the time or place when the asylum seeker should cross;
Not providing tear sheets in native languages; and
Omitting tear sheets altogether, giving no instruction or guidance on how to arrive at their hearing in the United States.
The stakes are extremely high. When an asylum seeker fails to attend their hearing due to confusion over their hearing or tear sheet, they can end up ordered “removed” or deported in absentia (without their appearance).
In the brief, Charlene D’Cruz included specific quotes describing her experience in Matamoros:
“Even for an attorney, the format and structure of the tear sheet is difficult to read and poorly worded.”
“In almost all the MPP notices, relevant and important information regarding the date and time of the next hearing were handwritten by CBP officers. Often these were...illegible. Whether or not someone is able to seek asylum in the United States or is deported in absentia should not come down to another person’s penmanship.”
“[T]ear sheets [had] erroneous information, such as the wrong time or date needed to arrive. Some agents would mistakenly put the time that an individual had court on their tear sheet, not the time that they needed to show up at the bridge.”
“Some families would risk their lives to sleep on the bridge the night before in order to make sure that they were able to attend court.”
Consequences for errors made by the Department of Homeland Security are horrific; asylum seekers face a life or death determination in an asylum hearing. To be sent back to a country from which they fled due to persecution means continued persecution and may mean death. Our Constitution promises due process with meaningful notice and a true right to be heard on claim. The tear sheet must meet those standards.
Once again Project Corazon was there, witnessing the injustices being done, analyzing the situation and joining with others to seek due process - a fundamental fairness - for asylum seekers.
Two ways you can help asylum seekers on our southern border today:
Volunteer with Project Corazon Matamoros by signing up here.