Saturday, October 11, 2014

ILLEGALS Advocates are Upset that a New Mexican ILLEGALS Holding Facility has a Much Better No ASYLUM GRANTED Rate than National Average

Trailers have been set up for a school at a federal immigration detention center in an isolated New Mexico desert town. A basketball court and a soccer field have been installed. And detainees are pleading their cases over a video link with judges in Denver.
Officials say that the facility, billed as a temporary place to house women and children from Central America who were among a wave of immigrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally this year, could remain open until next summer.
"All of us would love us to see the doors close in Artesia but the reality is the need will probably be there and probably until the end of the high season, probably August next year," a government official told immigration advocates in a recent confidential meeting.
The AP had access to a recording of the meeting with the official, whose name or position was not identified.
The detainees at the Artesia Family Residential Center, meanwhile, are growing increasingly frustrated that they are being held with no end in sight while earlier border-crossers were released with orders to contact immigration officials later.
"I'm being punished for coming here, they tell us," said Geraldyn Perez. She said she fled death threats by gangs in Guatemala.
The center opened as federal officials were realizing over the summer that the thousands of border-crossers they released had disappeared into the nation's interior and never showed up for any meetings with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.
The government official in the recorded confidential meeting acknowledged that about 70 percent of the released families vanished.
The official explained to human rights activists that prolonged detention of children and mothers is "not punitive," adding that detention is not a tool for deterring would-be immigrants, many of them who have made claims of asylum.
Instead, he said, "the deterrence is that you're not going to come to the United States and you're automatically here and you'll never be removed."
Immigration advocates say that a federal report by the Citizenship and Immigration Service's asylum unit to activists says only 37.8 percent of the Artesia detainees pass their initial interviews for asylum, compared to the 62.7 percent national average.
And for those who are eligible for release, bonds have been set as high as $25,000 or $30,000 or about five times the national average, according to immigration lawyer Stephen Manning, who has volunteered in Artesia.
Read the rest of the story HERE.

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