New Report from U.S. Religious Freedom Commission Exposes Barriers Facing Refugees

Human Rights First -- Media Alert

For Immediate Release: February 8, 2005

Contact: Tioka Tokedira (212) 845 5246
Eleanor Acer (212) 845-5227

New Report from U.S. Religious Freedom Commission Exposes
Barriers Facing Refugees

More on Asylum & Refugees
House Bill, To Be Voted On This Week, Would Impose
New Hardships

Today, the bi-partisan U.S. government Commission on
International Religious Freedom issued a comprehensive report
that documents a number of serious failings in U.S. treatment of
refugees who seek asylum in the United States. The 500 page
report provides unprecedented information about the challenges
that refugees face in seeking asylum in the U.S. and recommends
changes that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security must make
to ensure the proper treatment of asylum seekers.

"This report confirms just how difficult it already is for
refugees who flee from religious and other persecution to
navigate their way through the U.S. asylum system," said Eleanor
Acer, Director of Human Rights First's Asylum Program.
"Ironically, the House is scheduled to vote this week on a bill
that would make these problems even worse."

That bill, the REAL ID Act (H.R. 418), is being spearheaded by
Republican James Sensenbrenner, Chair of the House Judiciary
Committee. The bill would, among other things, give immigration
officers and immigration judges broad leeway to deny a refugee
asylum based on alleged "statements" taken in unreliable
circumstances -- the very kind of statements that the
Commission, in its report, concluded were "unreliable and
incomplete." The Commission's experts specifically found that
immigration judges frequently cited to these unreliable
documents when denying asylum.

The Commission, which monitors religious freedom around the
world and advises the President, the Secretary of State, and
Congress on religious freedom, was authorized in 2003 by
Congress to undertake this study relating to asylum seekers in
"expedited removal," the deportation process that allows
immigration officers to order deportations, a power previously
entrusted only to immigration judges.

The Commission's experts had unprecedented access to the asylum
system, and the report contains statistics and information that
have never been publicly released before.

The findings of the Commission's study include:

*There are serious problems with the expedited process that put
asylum seekers at risk of improper return -- in 15% of the cases
observed by the Commission experts, people who expressed a fear
of return were not given a chance to be interviewed by an asylum
officer;

*Most asylum seekers are held in jails or jail-like facilities
that the Commission found inappropriate for asylum seekers.
These conditions create a serious risk of psychological harm to
asylum seekers;

*About 32% of asylum seekers are jailed for 90 days or more and
the average length of their detention in these jail-like
facilities is 64 days. Some are held longer; release rates vary
widely across the country, with parole rates as low as 0.5 in
New Orleans, 8.4% in New York and 3.8% in Newark, New Jersey;

*Statistics show a significant drop in the rate at which local
immigration officers have released asylum seekers from these
jail-like facilities on parole in the years since September 11;

*Asylum seekers who did not have an attorney had a much lower
chance of being granted asylum than those who did;

*There are significant variations in the rate at which
immigration judges grant asylum -- from court to court, and from
judge to judge within the same court -- requiring better quality
assurance and administrative review;

*The approval of asylum appeals in expedited cases has dropped
significantly since the Department of Justice made changes in
2002. While the Board of Immigration Appeals sustained 24% of
these appeals in 2001, only 2 to 4% of these appeals have been
granted since 2002; and

*There are serious impediments to communication within the
Department of Homeland Security and it is exceedingly difficult
to resolve inter-bureau issues, leading the Commission to
recommend that the Department create a high level refugee
position to address asylum matters.

Human Rights First has documented the difficulties that refugees
who seek asylum face in these expedited procedures and in
immigration jails, most recently in its January 2004 report "In
Liberty's Shadow: U.S. Detention of Asylum Seekers in the Era of
Homeland Security." Human Rights First has recommended that the
Department of Homeland Security create a high-level refugee
protection position and formal rules to ensure that refugees who
seek asylum are not needlessly jailed. The Commission concurs in
these recommendations.

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