Asylum Case Backlog Leaves Migrants Unable to Provide For Themselves
A record 3 million cases are pending in the United States immigration court. Roughly a third of them are asylum applications. Many asylum seekers are staying in one of the city’s overcrowded shelters waiting for their applications to be processed. The longer the wait, the more many migrants like Hiroki Jaramillo are forced to work illegally or not at all.
“The wait time worries me because I am a father, the head of the household,” he said. “It’s complicated because in those five months, I cannot work because I could get in trouble. It’s really difficult for me because I have to sustain them, I need to feed them, it’s very complicated having to wait so long.”
Jaramillo arrived in the U.S. in February, but hasn’t received any help with his paperwork.
“I would have wanted a lawyer to have been assigned a lawyer to guide me through the process and tell me exactly what papers I need to fill out and what to do so that I don’t have any errors and so that the process was easier,” he said. “That’s what I would have liked.”
Retired Immigration Judge Dana Leigh Marks said migrants usually navigate the asylum application process on their own which contributed to the backlog.
“Doing it yourself, for an immigrant who has language problems and filling out the forms and difficulty gathering any documentation that might exist is very, very onerous,” she said.
Mark said asylum cases are time consuming with exceedingly high stakes and called them “death penalty cases” in a “traffic court setting.”
“Immigration cases are very fact specific, and they’re not the kind of cases that someone can easily prove with documentation,” she said. “So when someone is applying for asylum, they are claiming that their life or freedom would be threatened back in their homeland.”
Jaramillo hopes his asylum case is settled quickly so that he can provide for his family.
“It’s complicated because it’s the first time I’m living something like this,” he said. “I never thought I’d have to live through something like this. I don’t feel prepared, but I’m trying to have a good attitude.”
While it may take some time for immigration courts to finally catch up. Judge Marks believes people should be reminded that the asylum process isn’t as easy as it seems.
“A big problem that contributes to this is the myriad false narratives that are out there for the public,” she said. “The anti-immigrant screeds which exist, the myths that there is a way to just do it right, get in line and come, come here the right way.”
Andrea is a bilingual reporter covering immigration in New York City. She is a lifelong New Yorker whose work has centered on stories that affect the city’s immigrant communities.