I recently read a New Yorker article  by Adam Gopnik where he started the article and ended the article quoting Alexander Pope. Good article, but why quote a guy I did not even know was Pope? My article will quote someone a little more approachable, Billy Joel. Here goes, “Honesty is such a lonely word / Everyone is so untrue.” Who am I referring to? Our government and its treatment of Middle Eastern asylum seekers. The problem – though the…

The American Civil Liberties Union and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced  that a settlement has been reached in a lawsuit, Alfaro Garcia v. Johnson, filed by the ACLU seeking to compel USCIS to conduct reasonable fear interviews for aliens detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement who are prior deportees who are found in the United States and make Asylum claims. Under the settlement, USCIS will conduct these interviews within ten days of the alien’s being referred to USCIS for such…

It may be anticipation that makes you wait in the song (and ketchup commercial), but in real life it is USCIS that makes you wait. A trip to the Asylum Office in Anaheim, California, can mean reporting for a 6:30 a.m. interview and being called into the interview at 10 a.m. — or later, which is a long time to sit in a waiting room after setting out for the appointment at 4:30 a.m. It made me wonder whether we could apply…

On January 20, 2013, I wrote of of ICE’s de facto lengthy detention of asylum seekers. When an alien approaches the border and asks for asylum, the normal procedure is that he or she be arrested and detained until two things happen. First he or she must be interviewed by an asylum officer for a “credible fear interview.” If he or she passes this interview, then ICE will make a custody determination – evaluating documentation provided by the detainee about his or…