Thread: Relatives, advocates seek release of asylum petitioners from ICE detention center

Relatives, advocates seek release of asylum petitioners from ICE detention center

By Diana Washington Valdez / El Paso Times
Posted: 08/13/2013 01:21:00 PM MDT


Advocates and relatives called on U.S. immigration officials on Tuesday to release two detained asylum-petitioners on parole or bond so they can join their families in the United States while their cases are pending.

"Some people, if they are returned to Mexico, will die, or they will be disappeared," Annunciation House director Ruben Garcia said during a news conference at the immigration shelter in Downtown El Paso.

The news conference highlighted the cases of Rosa Hilda Carrera and Manases Cano, who both fear for their safety if returned to Mexico. Both had relatives who were killed in that country. Both are being held at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention Center in El Paso.

Carrera and Cano both also lived in the United States as undocumented immigrants before they were prosecuted as illegal immigrants when they sought to flee from Mexico and the violence after burying their loved ones in Mexico.

Gloria Perez, Carrera's sister, said, "If my sister is sent back to Mexico, she will want to take her two children, and I will fear for their lives and for what could happen to them."

ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said Tuesday that "both individuals are in ICE custody. Their immigration cases are under review by appropriate U.S. authorities."
ICE did not address complaints by advocates that asylum seekers are being denied credible fear applications when they express fear for their safety at the ports of entry.
Garcia said that in addition to Cano and Carrera, other refugees have given similar accounts of being dissuaded by some ICE, Customs and Border Protection or Border Patrol agents from applying for asylum. He said officers have threatened the people fleeing death threats with being jailed and taking their children away for years at a time. Isela Gomez Morales, a native of the Valle de Juárez, across the border from Fabens, was at the news conference. She requested asylum in May, and said that officers at the border made fun of her and mistreated her and her family.

"We were fleeing the violence in Valle de Juárez, but the border officers told us that what we told them was all a lie, and that many others had given similar accounts just to get across the border," Gomez said. "I responded by telling them to lock us up or whatever, but we could not go back."

Gomez said her sister-in-law was kidnapped by an armed commando in 2001, and then tortured and shot to death.

"It was one of the first cases that affected our family," she said. "My sister-in-law's son ran across to tell the soldiers who were staying across the street from my sister-in-law's home, but they wouldn't do anything. Then, these masked men began to burn down our homes in the valle."

U.S. authorities have documented the violence in Valle de Juárez, where rival drug cartels battled over the region for the past five years, and where the bodies of a dozen young women were found in shallow graves last year.

Carrera, in a statement read at the news conference, said she was threatened in Mexico after she tried to investigate the killing of her two sons in Chihuahua City.

"I found blood and pieces of my son's skull at the crime scene," said Carrera, who has two U.S.-born children, Jessica, 16, and Max, 8. They have not seen their mother for more than a year since her incarceration at the ICE Detention Center in El Paso.

Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organized based in New York, mentions the mother's case in its recent 2013 report "Turning Migrants into Criminals."

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the agency that enforces U.S. immigration laws, refers more cases for prosecution to the U.S. Department of Justice than do the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive Agency and the U.S. Marshals Service combined," according to the report.

The report also said that the criminal prosecution of illegal entrants has grown over the past 10 years from 3,000 prosecutions for illegal entry and 8,000 for illegal re-entry in 2002, to 48,000 prosecutions for illegal entry and 37,000 for illegal re-entry in 2012.

"These cases now outnumber other frequently prosecuted federal offenses such as drug, firearm and white collar crimes," the report said.

Garcia said U.S. authorities should ensure that ICE, Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol agents follow set policies and procedures for handling credible fear claims, and let an immigration judge determine the credibility of each claim.

"They should be trained on these policies and procedures, and supervisors should ensure that people are not threatened with incarceration or taking away their children," Garcia said.

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at 546-6140.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_23853225/relatives-advocates-seek-release-asylum-petitioners-from-ice

Many illegals come to this country and move from one area of our country to another. Why can't they just move to another place in their own country to where it's less violent and no one knows them? That way they wouldn't be breaking the law.

Silly me I almost forgot when they come to the US they get freebies and higher wages because they either work under the table or use a fake id and claim bunches of kids on their taxes to get a refund.