The Obama Administration recently moved to make it easier for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) officers to reject the so-called “credible fear” claims by illegal immigrants captured along the border. After the increasing number of such claims, the CIS is clarifying its standards for evaluating asylum requests.
At issue is the standards applied to asylum claims by immigrants captured along the U.S./Mexico border region. Current regulations require the immigrant making the credible fear claim must have a “significant possibility” of winning an asylum claim before a judge. According to a report in the San Antonio Express-News, John Lafferty, chief of the CIS Asylum Division defined “significant possibility” as requiring petitioners to “demonstrate a substantial and realistic possibility of succeeding in court.”
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Lafferty expressed concern that this standard was not being applied consistently and called for new training for officers. "In light of concerns that the application of the 'significant possibility' standard has lately been interpreted to require only a minimal or mere possibility of success, the revised (guidance) clearly states that a claim that has no possibility or only a minimal or mere possibility does not meet the ... standard," Lafferty wrote.
The result of the inconsistent application of the standard has been a surge in illegal immigrants who would otherwise be deported without a hearing, being scheduled for a hearing and then released into the community pending the hearing which might not occur for years. Lafferty noted a 250 percent increase in the number of “credible fear” claims that have been forwarded to courts for hearings. From 2012-2013 over 36,000 “credible fear” claims were filed according to a 2013 Congressional Research Service Report on asylum.Read the rest of the story HERE and read the report below:
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