‘Expedited Removal’ process as cold as ICE: Response to Jeh Johnson
Law professor Lauren Gilbert in The Hill responds to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson‘s description of family detention as a “critical” tool for screening immigrant families to evaluate whether they are a flight risk or have legitimate claims to asylum. She claims that the reality is that bona fide refugees are regularly sent back to their persecutors. Johnson justifies U.S. policy by emphasizing that, “We don’t have open borders, and if we ceased removals, we’d have a humanitarian crisis.” Detention of asylum seekers is used as deterrence, violating all notions of due process. What Johnson didn’t say is that the willingness of Asylum Officers and judges to dispatch imperiled asylum seekers back into the arms of the gangs they fled constitutes a humanitarian crisis of its own.
KJ