Jose David Castillo, with flashlight, helps find open beds for a family looking for a place to rest at night inside a shelter for for migrants and asylum-seekers in Tijuana. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

People walk up a ramp at the El Chaparral pedestrian border crossing in Tijuana, Mexico. Asylum-seekers can apply to enter the U.S. at this location. (Erika Schultz / The Seattle Times)

Winning asylum in the United States is far from a sure thing in ordinary times, but that’s especially true for Central American migrants today due to a surge in migration, recent policy changes and overloaded border-security agencies and immigration courts.

A Syracuse University report based on 2018 asylum applications and immigration-court results shows that asylum-seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala were granted asylum less often than the 35% acceptance rate for migrants overall.

For Salvadorans, the acceptance rate was 23.5%; for Hondurans, it was 21.2%; and for Guatemalans, it was 18.8%.

At the same time that it’s gotten harder to win asylum, more and more migrants have been seeking protection in the United States without legal assistance.

Migrants who are represented by an attorney are far more likely to win their cases than those who are not; 90% of asylum-seekers without an attorney were denied in 2017. Roughly half of those with attorneys were denied, researchers at Syracuse found.

The migrant population itself has also dramatically changed.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security released a border-crisis report in April raising the alarm about “the large-scale influx of (migrant families with children),” which the agency described as a new phenomenon compared to previous immigration waves.

Apprehensions of families with children represented just 1 percent of migrants in March 2017, the report says; today they make up nearly 60% of the total.

Some of those children, it says, are used as pawns by both criminal smuggling organizations and adult migrants to increase the odds of gaining entry into the United States.

More than 53,000 migrants with children in tow were apprehended by the Border Patrol in March of this year alone. DHS says that if numbers like this hold, apprehensions of families for this fiscal year could top half a million, a 600% increase over the previous fiscal year.

This new wave of migration from Central America has worsened to the point the Border Patrol isn’t fully able to function, the DHS report says. It has “overwhelmed the entire government and brought our border security and immigration management systems to the point of collapse.”

Among other proposals, DHS says it wants Congress to allocate funds for hiring more immigration judges and for setting up three or four regional processing centers along the border to accommodate the increased influx. It’s asking for new legislation to speed up the asylum process, so that hearings and final decisions happen in 20 or 30 days, compared to the current wait times of up to two years.

Complicating matters further is the Trump administration’s shifting guidance on border security and immigration.

By law, the U.S. cannot turn away immigrants seeking asylum, though it can deny claims if they don’t meet eligibility requirements. But in January, the administration started requiring asylum-seekers at the southern border to go back and wait in Mexico until their scheduled hearings.

A federal judge in April ordered the Trump administration to halt the so-called “Remain in Mexico” policy, then ran up against court challenges soon after, but the next month the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allowed the program to continue while the legal challenge proceeds.

Then, in July, the Trump administration made the most dramatic shift yet, putting in new rules that say that migrants who pass through another country on their way to the U.S. will be ineligible for asylum. That would make it all but impossible for the thousands of migrants who pass through Mexico from Central America, Haiti, and other countries to win asylum. The rule, which is also being challenged in court, also applies to children who cross the border alone.

The post Winning asylum in the U.S. is especially hard now for Central American migrants first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The court, in a 5-4 ruling in which President Donald Trump’s conservative appointee Neil Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices, invalidated the provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act and sided with convicted California burglar James Garcia Dimaya, a legal immigrant from the Philippines.

The ruling, written by liberal Justice Elena Kagan, was decried by the administration, which had defended the provision.

Federal authorities had ordered Dimaya deported after he was convicted in two California home burglaries in 2007 and 2009. Neither burglary involved violence.

Kagan said ambiguity surrounding the crimes of violence provision created confusion in lower courts. “Does car burglary qualify as a violent felony?” Kagan wrote. “Some courts say yes, another says no.” Kagan mentioned other examples including evading arrest and trespassing in which courts have also been divided.

The court’s ruling will not affect a number of serious crimes, including murder, rape, counterfeiting or terrorism offenses, which are specifically listed in the law as grounds for deportation, several immigration attorneys said. That could limit its impact, though the government does not provide data on which crimes trigger the most deportations.

Immigration attorneys are uncertain how many pending deportations will be affected by the ruling, but “it’s certainly not a tidal wave,” said Kathy Brady, a senior staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center.

Gorsuch, in a concurring opinion, wrote that the American colonies in the 18th century cited vague English law like the crime of treason as among the reasons for the American revolution.

“Today’s vague laws may not be as invidious, but they can invite the exercise of arbitrary power all the same – by leaving the people in the dark about what the law demands and allowing prosecutors and courts to make it up,” Gorsuch added.

It was not entirely surprising that Gorsuch would break with the four other conservatives on the court and vote to strike down the provision. Gorsuch is ideologically aligned with the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia, whom he replaced on the court last year. Scalia wrote a 2015 ruling that was invoked in Tuesday’s decision that found that a similar provision in a federal criminal sentencing law was overly broad.

Gorsuch interpreted the immigration provision based on the original understanding of the Constitution, a view held by many conservative jurists.

‘SAFE HAVEN FOR CRIMINALS’

“Today’s ruling significantly undermines DHS’s efforts to remove aliens convicted of certain violent crimes, including sexual assault, kidnapping and burglary, from the United States,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesman Tyler Houlton said.

“By preventing the federal government from removing known criminal aliens, it allows our nation to be a safe haven for criminals and makes us more vulnerable as a result,” Houlton added.

Trump called on Congress to pass legislation. “Today’s Court decision means that Congress must close loopholes that block the removal of dangerous criminal aliens, including aggravated felons,” Trump said on Twitter.

The Supreme Court upheld a 2015 lower court ruling that the provision requiring Dimaya’s deportation created uncertainty over which crimes may be considered violent, risking arbitrary enforcement in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The court issued the ruling at a time of intense focus on immigration issues in the United States as Trump seeks to increase deportations of immigrants who have committed crimes, though it was former President Barack Obama’s administration that sought to deport Dimaya.

Dimaya’s attorney, Joshua Rosenkranz, said the decision strikes down a law that has over decades led to the deportation of thousands of immigrants. “The Supreme Court delivered a resounding message today: You can’t banish a person from his home and family without clear lines, announced up front,” Rosenkranz said.

In 2010, the government sought to deport him and a Justice Department board refused to cancel his expulsion. In the federal criminal code, a “crime of violence” includes offenses in which force either was used or carried a “substantial risk” that it would be used.

In a dissenting opinion on Tuesday, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts said the immigration law provision at issue should have been upheld. Roberts said the ruling will have significant ramifications because the same crime of violence definition is used in numerous other laws, including using or carrying firearms during a violent crime, and could call into question convictions under them.

The Supreme Court heard arguments in the case on Oct. 2, the first day of its current nine-month term. The court initially heard arguments in January 2017 when it was one justice short, but decided last June after Gorsuch brought the court to full strength to have the case re-argued, putting him in a position to cast the deciding vote.

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