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| REUTERS |
This week, the Department of Homeland Security announced a new effort to crack down on asylum fraud — by going after the lawyers who enable it.
DHS will be imposing civil fines on attorneys who file bogus and frivolous protection applications on behalf of their alien clients.
About time: For decades, various administrations have turned a blind eye to those who exploit Americans’ humanitarian instincts for pecuniary gain.
By its nature, fraud generally is one of the hardest crimes to prove — it’s axiomatic in law enforcement that the greatest con artists are the ones who never got caught.
Our generous asylum laws, however, almost encourage fraud.
To ensure immigrants aren’t returned to persecution or torture back home, the US asylum statute is intentionally lax on the evidence applicants must present to support their claims.
Applicants’ testimony alone “may be sufficient to sustain” their burden of proof “without corroboration,” but only if the court finds it credible and concludes there’s no supporting evidence they could and must present.
That overly compassionate evidence standard has been abused for years by aliens who concoct tales of mistreatment and harm, many of which boggle the imagination and strain credulity.
But given that few judges are familiar with police practices in far-off lands, or with the political struggles in remote regions of the world, they don’t have much to go on.
The State Department used to help.
Prior to President Barack Obama’s administration, consular officers would pore over applications, opining on some directly and writing generalized “country conditions” assessments on the most common claims in the rest.
Back then, asylum applications were far more limited, with a backlog of about 106,000 in 2012.
It’s been over a decade since the State Department provided such comments, and in the interim, the backlog — nearly 2.36 million asylum applications in the nation’s 73 immigration courts alone — has grown so large our consular officers abroad would be powerless to respond to more than a sample.
The flood of cases, coupled with the relaxed evidentiary standards and the promise of a work permit for simply filing an application, has created a vulnerability that unauthorized aliens and more than a few attorneys and notarios — hucksters who pass themselves off as lawyers with no license or training — have exploited. --->READ MORE HERE
The Department of Homeland Security is directing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to craft new policies to crack down on immigration attorneys if they aid in filing fraudulent asylum claims.
The move is the Trump administration’s latest effort to target asylum, the legal process by which those fleeing danger and persecution can seek protection in the United States.
The DHS memo accuses immigration attorneys of “assert[ing] that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country because of a protected characteristic like race or political opinion.”
It tasks ICE with developing new fraud policies and would take “enforcement actions against immigration attorneys who file false asylum claims in an immigration court.”
Attorneys are ethically obligated to provide accurate information in court proceedings and already could face disciplinary action if they fail to do so.
Nonetheless, the press release cites the statute that establishes penalties for violations of document fraud.
“Protection claims like asylum are intended to cover unique and narrow circumstances, but it is standard practice for immigration attorneys representing illegal aliens to assert that virtually every illegal alien is going to be persecuted or tortured in his or her home country. Historically, ICE has depended on the discipline of immigration judges and the enforcement of criminal fraud laws to deter this conduct, but ICE has its own tools,” James Percival, a general counsel for the department, said in a statement.
“Now, thanks to this directive, ICE attorneys have greater authority to enforce the law and stop the abuse of our asylum system by illegal aliens and attorneys.” --->READ MORE HERE
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