Migrant Parents Failing Asylum Screenings
Just one day after thousands took to the streets in hundreds of cities across the country to protest President Trump's immigration policies, HuffPost reports of yet another horrible effect of this administration's cruelty. Immigration lawyers are finding that migrant parents who’ve been separated from their children are failing their asylum screenings because they’re too upset to focus on effectively pursuing their cases.
“They are red-faced and have bloodshot eyes and all they do is cry,” said attorney Jodi Goodwin. "We are trying to ask them basic information but they are whimpering and they can’t talk.”
Though President Trump ended his family separation policy by executive over, more than 2,000 kids have yet to be reunited with their parents. Goodwin told HuffPost that about half of the 20 parents she’d spoken with earlier this week did not pass the “credible fear” portion of their asylum interviews. About 88% of asylum seekers usually pass this part of the process. Goodwin reported being worried that people with legitimate asylum cases are willing to be deported in order to be reunited with their children.
Unfortunately, phone calls to their children can sometimes only deepen the parents' pain:
While lawyers report that over the past week, more of their clients have been able to call their children, those conversations can sometimes exacerbate a parent’s trauma. “The things their children are saying to them are horrific,” said Goodwin. She recounts how one daughter told her mother: “Mami, I thought you were dead. Mami, they told me that you didn’t want me anymore. Mami, you abandoned me.”
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