The court battle against Joe Biden’s controversial executive order begins. The Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU, reported this Wednesday that it has demanded the Democratic president’s measure that closes the border with Mexico when more than 2,500 daily arrests are exceeded over the course of a week. The litigation is not a surprise. The human rights organization had announced its intention to take the executive action to court. “These actions will almost definitively stop access to the protections provided by asylum for the vast majority of those who arrive at the border,” the group said in a statement.
As several immigration experts have repeated since Biden announced the measure, the ACLU highlights that the executive order has echoes in the measures implemented by Donald Trump during his administration. The organizations especially highlight the decree of the former Republican president that prohibited six Muslim countries from entering the country. The ACLU recalls that immigrant human rights activists were successful in their lawsuit against that measure.
“They have left us no choice but to sue,” said Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU. “The Administration does not have unilateral authority to override Congress and ban asylum based on how someone enters the country,” Gelernt added in a statement. These were some of the criticisms that the president received even within the Democratic party.
Senator Chris Murphy said last week that he welcomed the Government’s intention to strengthen border surveillance. He doubted, however, that the Executive had the power to stop the asylum process entirely on its own.
Biden’s obstacles to asylum, a product of his shift to the right in the election campaign, have been severely criticized by human rights groups. “It is a shame that the United States Government responds this way to people fleeing torture and political persecution, who come to our border in search of help,” says Keren Zwick, one of the lawyers who will lead the process in the Washington DC courts
The 29-page lawsuit has been filed in the capital by five legal organizations representing two NGOs, Las Américas and Raíces (Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services). Javier Hidalgo, the director of Raíces’ legal strategy, assures that Biden’s order reverses the spirit of the various regulations approved since 1965 with the aim of protecting those who arrived in the land of freedoms.
The text of the complaint makes clear some of the entry barriers that Biden places for those seeking to apply for asylum. “Even when a non-citizen expresses fear of it and passes the first filter to obtain some protection, the new guidelines drastically reduce the time they have to search and find an attorney before their Credible Fear interview,” it indicates. the demand.
Immigrants had 24 hours to find legal advice. A year ago, the time was 48 hours. Biden’s order now gives them just four hours. “In practice, this eliminates any possibility of receiving legal help, much less representation, for the vast majority of detainees in custody,” the text states.
“It is outrageous, though not surprising, that the same people who came to power promising to restore our commitment to humanitarian protections are willing to sacrifice the lives of Black and Brown people to score some political points,” Hidalgo said.
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