INS Acted Unfairly in Deeming Requests for Asylum as ‘Frivolous,’ U.S. Judge Says

A federal judge, dealing a blow to the Immigration and Naturalization Service detention program in South Texas, has ruled that the INS has unfairly denied work permits to applicants for political asylum whose stories were deemed too “frivolous.”

In granting a preliminary injunction on Friday for 13 asylum applicants, U.S. District Judge William Wayne Justice said that the INS had denied work permits in an arbitrary fashion, based largely on brief interviews with applicants, and that immigration officials were dismissing cases as frivolous that on closer examination could merit the granting of asylum.

Further, the judge ruled that the interview process appeared to have been used as a tool to catch aliens contradicting themselves, rather than as a way to supplement the asylum applications.

‘Very Significant’

The text of the decision, which was made available to reporters Tuesday, was deemed “very significant “ by immigrant rights lawyer Robert Rubin of the San Francisco-based Lawyers’ Committee for Urban Affairs. Rubin, one of the lawyers who argued the case before Judge Justice, said that the next step would be to expand the case to a class action suit.

INS spokesman Duke Austin said on Tuesday that the preliminary injunction was still being studied by government attorneys and that the practical effects of the ruling were still uncertain. He did say, however, that it seemed to be a step toward shifting the burden of proving eligibility from the alien to the immigration service in work permit requests.

“We’ll have to see where we go from here,” he said.

Since January, the INS has had a policy of detaining Central American refugees in a camp near Brownsville, Tex., until their requests for asylum had either been granted or denied. The INS has maintained that such a policy was necessary because without detention, applicants would immediately disappear and become a part of the underground world of illegal aliens. The INS also contended that it was being deluged by a flood of frivolous asylum applications and that detaining aliens was a way of stemming the flow.

Detention Premise

“This decision tends to undermine the entire premise of the South Texas detention policy,” said Rubin. “That policy was based upon the INS claim that individuals were abusing the asylum system by filing frivolous asylum claims and therefore detention was necessary. Now a federal judge has determined that the INS has been misapplying the frivolous standard and thus the whole justification for the detention policy must be questioned.”

Justice said that the inability to work during the asylum application process “may compel an applicant to abandon his or her asylum application and return to his or her native country. Not only would this deprive the applicant of the opportunity to urge his or her application through the entire review process, but would, in substantial likelihood, subject the applicant to even more severe persecution upon return to the country he or she has attempted to flee.”

Austin said that if the work permit standards are relaxed, the political asylum process would turn into nothing more than a “temporary work program” because asylum applicants could remain in the United States for years while using all the appeals procedures available to them.

He also said, as the INS has long contended, that relaxing the work permit standards “will serve as a tremendous magnet.”

The INS attempted to make that case in arguments before Justice, saying that there would be a flood of illegal aliens that would “significantly harm the INS’ ability to control our borders.”

The judge said the INS had been unable to produce evidence to support its predictions, and therefore the court could give them no credence.