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Attorney General Ashcroft Calls for Blanket
Detentions of Haitian Asylum Seekers
New Precedent Decision Portrays Haitians as Risks to National
Security
NEW YORK - The Attorney General issued a sweeping “precedent
decision” on April 17 which portrays Haitian asylum seekers
arriving by sea as threats to national security and effectively directs
immigration judges to indefinitely detain these Haitians.
"This is not an decision which is concerned so much with protecting
our security as it is concerned with sending a message to the Haitians
themselves," said Eleanor Acer, Director of the Asylum Program
at the Lawyers Committee. "The thinly veiled message behind this
order reads: 'go home Haitians. You are not wanted here.'"
As a result of the Attorney General’s decision, Haitian men,
women and children, - who have no intent to harm the United
States - will be detained in jails or other facilities for months
or years without being given a meaningful chance to demonstrate that
their detention is unnecessary.
“In essence the Attorney General - invoking the term '
national security ' - is depriving asylum seekers of the chance
to prove that they, in their individual cases, present no security
risk and merit release on bond. Jailing asylum seekers for months
or longer and depriving them of the chance to show, in their individual
cases, that they present no risk and merit release, is unfair and
inconsistent with both American values and international law,”
added Acer.
This is yet another action taken by the Administration which enforces
a discriminatory detention policy directed at Haitians, the Lawyers
Committee said. The decision could also have a devastating impact
on other asylum seekers due to its disingenuous invocation of "national
security" to justify the indefinite detention of asylum seekers
who mean no harm to the U.S.
In the decision (called In Re D-J-), the Attorney General refused
to release an 18-year-old Haitian asylum seeker who has been detained
since October 29, 2002, when he and about 200 other Haitian men, women
and children arrived by boat in Florida . The Attorney General's action
also vacated a decision made by the Board of Immigration Appeals which
had ruled that the young man was entitled to an individualized determination
of the need for his continued detention.
The Attorney General, in his decision, contends that releasing the
Haitian asylum seeker “or similarly situated undocumented seagoing
migrants, on bond would give rise to adverse consequences for national
security and sound immigration policy.” There is no indication
that the 18-year-old Haitian himself is any threat to U.S. security.
Instead, the Attorney General has concluded that a surge in Haitian
migration by sea would “divert valuable Coast Guard and [Department
of Defense] resources from counterterrorism and homeland security
responsibilities.” The Attorney General also claimed that the
State Department had asserted that it “has noticed an increase
in third country nations (Pakistanis, Palestinians, etc.) using Haiti
as a staging point for attempted migration to the United States. This
increases the national security interest in curbing use of this migration
route.”
A full copy of the decision is available on the Department of Justice’s
website at http://www.usdoj.gov/eoir/efoia/bia/Decisions/Revdec/pdfDEC/3488.pdf.
The Attorney General directed that immigration judges and the Board
of Immigration Appeals (the administrative appellate board that reviews
immigration judge decisions), in future bond release proceedings,
consider government submissions claiming that national security interests
are implicated. In so doing, the Attorney General sent a clear signal
that he expects immigration judges and the Board to refuse to release
Haitian asylum seekers as well as other non-citizens based on U.S.
government assertions of broad national security concerns -
even when there is no reason to believe the individual at issue himself
presents a risk of harm to the United States.
The Lawyers Committee is troubled by the overly broad and contorted
arguments used by the Attorney General in order to justify his invocation
of the “national security” label in this case. “Attorney
General Ashcroft essentially says that giving Haitian refugees due
process is just too distracting,” said Acer. “And anything
distracting is by definition a danger to national security. Therefore
Haitian refugees are a threat to national security. And we're likely
to have less of them if we keep them all in jail. Acer noted that
“this decision is yet another example of how the Administration
takes measures in the name of security that cause extreme hardship
to people without making Americans safer.”
At another point in the decision, the Attorney General also argued
that the 200 Haitian asylum seekers on the October 29 boat should
be detained rather than released on bond because the U.S. government
did not have the capacity to adequately screen them. The Attorney
General stated that: “Under the current National Emergency,
the Government’s capacity to promptly undertake an exhaustive
factual investigation concerning the individual status of hundreds
of undocumented aliens is sharply limited and strained to the limit.”
While it strains credulity to believe that the U.S., which is at this
very moment conducting security checks on many other non-citizens,
cannot handle screening 200 Haitian men, women and children, it is
also significant that nowhere does the Attorney General address the
substantial cost of detaining the Haitians for prolonged periods -
or the amount of money that could be better spent on directly protecting
national security if adequate resources were devoted to promptly and
thoroughly screening the Haitians, so that they could be released
from detention rather than jailed at substantial government expense
for months or years.
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