Immigrants seeking refuge here treated as criminals, speaker says

Individuals seeking refuge or asylum in the United States are often summarily jailed and… Individuals seeking refuge or asylum in the United States are often summarily jailed and treated as criminals, according to Kathleen Lucas.

Lucas, the executive director and founder of the Coalition for Immigrants’ Rights at the Community Level, spoke to about 20 people about the plights and injustices faced by refugees and asylum seekers in the United States in the Cathedral of Learning Monday night.

Those injustices often go without remedy because of the belief of many Americans that “we’ve already got too many people with too many problems,” she said.

After the events of Sept. 11th, she said the injustices have become more pronounced, a trend that she partially blames on the current executive administration.

Lucas said that the Attorney General has the power to overturn grants of asylum. This power, she said, was used “very rarely in the past, but since [Attorney General John] Ashcroft came into office, it’s been happening a lot more often.”

In addition, Lucas said, “We have immigration judges who have never granted asylum.”

Lucas also said that individuals from countries held in high regard by the State Department have difficulty in winning asylum. She presented Nigeria as an example of this trend. Because the State Department views Nigeria as the “shining star of democracy in Africa,” asylum-seekers from that country have a more difficult time convincing immigration judges that they have been victims of injustice, she said.

Lucas works with refugees and asylum-seekers, detained by Immigration and Naturalization Services, at York County Prison near York, Pa. The prison holds more INS detainees than any other prison in the country, according to Lucas.

“The INS detainees are wearing the same uniforms as the American criminals,” which Lucas said usually means that they receive the same treatment. The problem, she said, is that these detainees “have not committed a crime,” and indeed “are not even charged with a crime.”

Lucas also presented an argument that might appeal to a more conservative element. “Even if you ignore all the humanitarian issues,” she said, it still costs $65 per day, per person, to detain refugees and asylum-seekers, when they could be integrated, tax-paying members of society.