NYT Op-Ed, “Locked Up for Seeking Asylum”

Journalist Elizabeth Rubin (Twitter:  @ezruby) has written an editorial in today’s Sunday Review section of the New York Times, entitled “Locked Up for Seeking Asylum.”  The op-ed describes the case of an Afghan interpreter for the US military who fled persecution from the Taliban, sought asylum in the U.S., lost his case while pro se before an immigration judge, and has been in immigration detention for almost a year.  The piece powerfully illustrates systemic deficiencies in the immigration system, including the practice of detaining asylum seekers, backlogs in the immigration courts, demanding standards required by some immigration judges for establishing credibility in asylum cases, and problems raised by the lack of access to counsel for noncitizens in removal proceedings.  It also contains a nice reference to the work of the Immigrant Justice Corps, which provides fellowships to relatively new attorneys to represent noncitizens facing deportation.  Worth reading and a good piece for law students, too (likely tying together themes that those teaching/taking Immigration Law have covered or are about to cover).

-JKoh