Browsing by Subject "Asylum"
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Item Acompañando niños migrantes “no acompañados” : a feminist geopolitical perspective on Central American unaccompanied minors in U.S. long term foster care (LTFC)(2022-05-09) Ramos, Esther Sarai; Torres, Rebecca Maria; Gilman, DeniseMost unaccompanied migrant children from Central America who make it across the US-Mexico border and into Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) custody remain in short-term shelters while awaiting reunification. While many children go on to join family members, those with limited options, are placed in long term foster care (LTFC) while they await their legal cases to be adjudicated. This group is largely invisible in research on unaccompanied migrant children because of the restricted and opaque nature of long-term foster care. This thesis analyzes, through a geopolitical feminist framework, their particular struggles as they navigate between the immigration and foster care systems. Based on over six months of participant observation/accompaniment of foster care children with an NGO, a review of case files, interviews with key informants, and courtroom ethnography, this study aims to identify the challenges and daily struggles faced by Central American unaccompanied children in the U.S. federally funded long term foster care and immigration system. Through a conceptual lens integrating feminist geopolitics, children’s geographies, accompaniment theory/activist/engaged research, and testimonio, this research centers the perspectives of children and their advocates as they navigate the vagaries of pursuing asylum and special immigrant juvenile status (SIJS). Specifically, it analyzes how unaccompanied children employ agentic strategies to negotiate long term foster care and the evolving changes in immigration law/policy. Finally, it provides recommendations for how activists and legal representatives can better support and advocate for the needs of children in long term foster care, who are simultaneously navigating the child welfare system and the process to obtain legal status. This paper contributes to the limited literature on the experiences of unaccompanied migrant children in foster care and offers preliminary insights into the policy and advocacy needs to better support this vulnerable population.Item Cycles of denial : US reception of drug-war refugees from Mexico through the asylum system(2014-05) Romero, Lynn Elise; Rodriguez, NéstorThis thesis will focus on the recent increase in the number of Mexican nationals applying for asylum in the United States and the disproportionate denial of their claims. It will help clarify national debates regarding asylum, shed light on bi-national socio-political conditions, and raise important questions about the human rights of asylum seekers, including the United States’ obligations regarding those rights. It is also work that adds a rarely considered perspective to the scholarship on Mexican migration by focusing on migrants who are motivated by violence rather than economic factors.Item Fraud asylees from China(2012-05) Yuan, Zhongyu; Todd, Russell; Jensen, RobertImmigration issues have been put on the center of the discussion table for years. Mentioning the term, the first thing coming into one’s mind maybe Mexican or Latino citizens secretly hide inside a cargo ship and risk their lives to cross the border. But the new Chinese immigrants’ inflow creates no less influence. They do not bring drugs but take brutal labor jobs, they do not come with families but live more compactly with groups, they do not keep unnoticed but will actively show up in churches and can get green card with much ease. The externalization of Chinese migrant worker trend deserves more social and economic attention. In this master’s report, I will unravel the puzzles of the Chinese immigration wave, focusing on their pursuit of asylum fraud. In 2011, more than 32 percent of the total 21,012 asylum approvals are granted to Chinese nationals. In east Los Angeles area, where undocumented Chinese conglomerate, low-end factories and shops, churchs, and law offices form up a complete immigration chain service. V The two main characters, Ai Peng and Guo Yinghua, represent the two universal approaches among the Chinese community: asylum through reasons of religion and birth control. Through interviews with professionals and scholars and existing materials, I am intending to depict the real lives of asylees, evaluate impact of the immigration wave, and raises legal and executive questions for improvement.Item Migrant Protection Protocols: Implementation and Consequences for Asylum Seekers in Mexico, PRP 218(LBJ School of Public Affairs, 2020) Leutert, StephanieIn November 2018, the United States and Mexico negotiated the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Before MPP, asylum seekers were allowed to wait in the United States during their asylum cases. However, with MPP, asylum seekers are now forced to wait in Mexican border cities as their cases move through the U.S. immigration system. In January 2019, U.S. officials began to implement MPP in San Diego and then extended the program across the rest of the border. As of April 2020, more than 64,000 asylum seekers had been returned to Mexico as part of the program. The majority of the asylum seekers returned to Mexico under MPP are from the Northern Triangle of Central America, although individuals from other nationalities have also been put in the program. As of March 2020, the highest number of MPP returnees were from Honduras, accounting for 35 percent of individuals in the program. This was followed by asylum seekers from Guatemala (24 percent), Cuba (12.7 percent), and El Salvador (12.5 percent). U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have exempted some groups from MPP, including unaccompanied minors, Mexican citizens, non-Spanish speakers (although Brazilians were eventually included), and asylum seekers in certain “special circumstances.” However, CBP officers have discretion regarding who is subject to the program, and these exemptions have not been consistently implemented. Additionally, CBP officers have also included members of “highrisk populations” in MPP, such as pregnant women, LGBTQ+ individuals, minors, and people who are disabled. Once asylum seekers are returned to Mexico, they face various challenges. Although the Mexican Migratory Law of 2011 guarantees asylum seekers the right to healthcare and education in Mexico, it can be difficult to access these services. Asylum seekers are also responsible for acquiring their own housing, even though they often have few resources. Further, they must navigate these situations while at risk of violence from criminal organizations or predatory actors. Criminal groups often target asylum seekers because they have no local ties or community and because they often have friends and family in the United States who can pay their ransom. This report recommends that MPP be immediately discontinued. However, understanding that this may be difficult in the short term, this report provides additional recommendations to address the most egregious conditions under MPP.These include improving safety for asylum seekers, excluding at-risk populations, and providing asylum seekers with greater access to due process and legal representation.Item Procedural failures during the expedited removal process(2017-05) Weaver, Scott D.; Rodriguez, Néstor; Gilman, Denise L.This thesis contributes to our understanding of the impediments to protection faced by asylum seekers subject to the “expedited removal,” or summary deportation, provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act. By studying various texts, from the statute itself, to agency policy memoranda, to human rights reports, I compare the law of expedited removal as it is written and interpreted by the government, to the law as it is actually applied. I then argue that asylum seekers caught up in the expedited removal process are not being given the procedural protections that they deserve. This topic is of particular interest in light of recent immigration enforcement policy changes ordered by the Trump administration. Specifically, President Trump has extended expedited removal to cover noncitizens with substantial ties to the United States. While many academics have studied immigration enforcement, I hope to add to the conversation by looking deeply at the texts that make up the law of expedited removal, and contrasting the procedures outlined in these texts with de facto procedures in the field. As a future immigration lawyer, I believe that it is important to add to lay understanding of the law of expedited removal, and the impediments to protection that asylum seekers face when they are placed in expedited removal proceedings.Item Sanctuary and its people : reform and resistance in the fight for asylum(2023-05-12) Villarreal, Alexandra; Chávez, Karma R.; González-Martin, Rachel V.This report explores the Sanctuary Movement of the 1980s, a loose transnational network of churches and volunteers who used civil disobedience as a strategy to spotlight the United States’ harmful policies in Central America, provide a non-statist form of protection for forcibly displaced Salvadorans and Guatemalans, and challenge the unequal provision of the U.S.’s recently enacted asylum laws. Some of my research questions are deceptively simple: Why did the Sanctuary Movement (or movements) exist? And who were its leaders? Others are more utilitarian: What does the Sanctuary Movement imply about the history of asylum in the U.S., and particularly the efficacy and equity of the protections set forth in the 1980 Refugee Act? At the interstices of these varied but related inquiries, I find answers that suggest the 1980s Sanctuary Movement existed in the U.S. because equitable asylum laws did not, and because brave people — North Americans and Central Americans alike, of diverse genders, races, and ethnicities — refused to accept that reality. I conclude by underscoring sanctuary’s continued resonances today, drawing lessons from a transnational movement of flawed yet exceptional people united by and for good.Item Stranded in nepantla : Mexican asylum seekers stuck in the margins of asylum(2022-07-08) Lugo, Priscilla K.; Torres, Rebecca MariaThe U.S. asylum system has seen numerous attacks on its integrity and accessibility in the previous presidential administration that have continued into the Biden Administration. This thesis looks to analyze the ways that the system remains inaccessible to Mexican children and women seeking asylum and the harmful effects it had on them. Living in the borderlands due to immigration policies like metering and Title 42, in perpetual limbo has forced these folks to live in the same country they fear and are trying to flee. This not only continues the danger they are living in, but also prevents them from being able to move forward with their lives. They remain in what Gloria Anzaldúa refers to as nepantla, a transitional place where change and growth occurs. However, it is also a place where people can remain in– stuck in a form of purgatory, unable to begin the healing process until they move on with their life. The asylum seekers interviewed in this thesis are at various different stages of nepantla. Some remain stuck, unable to imagine life beyond the border because for far too long, they have been forced to wait. Others found their way through the borderlands through Title 42 exemption processes and were able to start imaging their lives, and create their lives and work through their conocimiento in the safety of the United States. The objective is to find the ways the policy and the borderlands creates these marginal spaces, but holds the potential to dissolve them.