Political rhetoric aims ‘vitriol and hatred’ at immigrant asylum-seekers, California advocates say

Brian Lopez recently drove more than 500 miles from Northern California to Tijuana, Mexico, just south of the border, where he and other legal experts gathered to offer free guidance to people seeking asylum in the United States.

Lopez, a Sacramento-based immigration attorney, said it’s important work — especially because only a small fraction of asylum seekers can obtain legal help as they formally submit their cases to the immigration courts.

“It’s a pretty complex process,” Lopez said. “It’s definitely not easy.”

These are people seeking a new life in this country to escape threats of violence, political retribution or severe poverty.

But California immigrant advocacy groups said asylum seekers arrive here and find themselves being used as “pawns” in the latest political debate between calls for strengthening border security and comprehensive immigration reform that offers a real path to legal resident status and U.S. citizenship.

A Texas state law, Senate Bill 4 currently under appeal in federal court, makes entering Texas illegally a state crime and allows state judges to order that migrants who violate the law be deported, Newsweek reported. The Biden administration and immigration advocates argue the Texas law is unconstitutional and that that authority rests with the federal government.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a March 20 post on X, formerly Twitter, he will continue to instruct the Texas National Guard to “erect razor wire to repel migrants & keep buoy barriers in river.” Those who support the Texas law say the Biden administration isn’t doing enough to secure the border.

Lopez said it’s these “political stunts” that inhibit an immigrant’s ability to seek asylum legally in court, while promoting falsehoods about the immigration process. He said immigrants can’t apply for asylum outside of the United States; only certain refugees can, and entering the country unlawfully doesn’t harm one’s ability to seek asylum.

The attorney said “hard line political rhetoric” has only increased the fears of asylum seekers and fueled their “desperation.”

“There has to be a more humane understanding of immigrants,” Lopez said.

“They feel more attacked.”

Immigrants flown to Sacramento

In June, 36 Latin American migrants arrived in Sacramento after the state of Florida chartered two planes to take them to California’s capital city. Some of them told The Sacramento Bee they were approached outside a migrant center in El Paso, Texas, by individuals, offering free transportation and promising housing, jobs and immigration services were waiting for them in Sacramento.

The migrants later discovered it was a lie, and they were stranded in Northern California hoping for a job but not wanting to harm their application for asylum without obtaining a federal work permit.

One of the migrants, a man from Venezuela, expressed some frustration at the time while discussing the media attention and political discourse surrounding their arrival in Sacramento. He and three other migrants spoke to The Bee last year on the condition of anonymity, fearing violence and other reprisals for their presence in the capital region.

“We aren’t involved in any politics here,” the 34-year-old man told The Bee in June. “We are immigrants. We don’t know anything here, from how to take a train or get an Uber. You think we know politics?”

A coalition of state and Sacramento County leaders and religious groups, such as Sacramento Area Congregations Together, stepped up quickly to provide shelter and food for the stranded migrants and help connect them with immigration legal assistance.

Sacramento ACT, which is a member of PICO California, called for the multi-faith statewide community advocacy group’s campaigns director, Eddie Carmona. He said one of his immediate tasks was to call community advocates in Texas and other states to warn migrants of the lies that were spreading.

Carmona also reached out to his political contacts throughout California to sound the alarms of what was happening to these migrants, who were among many over the past two years bused or flown from southern U.S. states to immigration sanctuary cities with similar false promises.

Texas Gov. Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have in the past taken credit for busing or flying migrants to various places in the U.S., including New York, Martha’s Vineyard and Washington, D.C.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta and Sheriff Javier Salazar of Bexar County, Texas, in a July letter sent to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland demanded more answers for the flights that transported Latin American migrants to Sacramento and Massachusetts over several months. The letter requested a Department of Justice investigation into the program funded by the state of Florida.

“It is unconscionable to use people as political props by persuading them to travel to another state based on false or deceptive representations,” the letter stated. “We urge USDOJ to investigate potential violations of federal law by those involved in this scheme.”

Carmona explained how this latest debate over immigration harms those who are simply seeking a better life in this country.

“I think that’s what the political rhetoric does: it criminalizes and it demonizes immigrants,” Carmona said. “That’s why immigration and immigrants have been used as political pawns since as long as I can remember.”

One recent example: John Bolton, former national security adviser under former President Donald Trump, told Newsweek in a March interview he’s worried terrorists may come across the border, and that the current handling of the border makes it too easy to possibly smuggle chemical and biological weapons into the country.

Carmona said the fear-inducing rhetoric focuses on creating a false narrative of immigrants coming to this country to take someone’s job.

“There are no political points to be scored to say that immigrants have contributed to this country and have built this country to what it is today. There’s more political points to be scored by creating the sense of fear.”

‘Using immigrants as a political talking point’

While immigration has been the focus of political debates before in the United States, Carmona said there seems to be “significantly more vitriol and hatred” in the rhetoric this time around that dismisses the humanity of immigrants.

“Both parties are guilty of it, Republicans and Democrats,” Carmona said. ”When are they gonna stop using immigrants as a political talking point, as a way to further their political agenda?”

Lopez, the Sacramento immigration attorney, said it’s the heated political debate in Washington and in some of the border states, along with a lot of misinformation, that has led to more migrants rushing to the border.

The Bee asked the U.S. Executive Office for Immigration Review for data that show how many new cases have been filed in the past few years in immigration courts in San Francisco and Sacramento, which migrant advocates say are tremendously backlogged.

A spokesperson for the federal agency, after acknowledging The Bee’s request, did not respond with any court data or a statement to indicate what is being done to reduce the immigration court backlog.

Nearly 1 million new cases filed in U.S. immigration courts

Through February of the 2024 federal fiscal year, which started Oct. 1 and ends Sept. 30, over 993,966 new cases were filed in U.S. immigration courts throughout the country, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, also known as TRAC. Slightly more than 355,000 immigration cases have been completed.

What’s got migrants rushing to the U.S. southern border? Lopez said many fear President Joe Biden won’t be reelected this year and Trump will return to office. The immigration attorney said migrants rushed to the border after Biden was elected in 2020, thinking this was their chance, and now they’re worried their chances will worsen after Trump’s return.

Lopez said a U.S. president alone can’t change federal immigration laws, but a president can make the immigration process even more difficult.

The filed cases for those seeking asylum were among the over 3 million cases that are still pending in U.S. immigration courts, according to a report published by TRAC in December. That immigration court backlog was 2 million one year earlier, according to TRAC data, and immigration judges now average 4,500 pending cases each.

Lopez said the U.S. immigration court system is “oversaturated” with cases and not nearly enough judges. He said he has clients who have been waiting for more than five years in a “limbo-status” for a final court decision on their asylum case as judges struggle to find an available calendar date.

There also are too few immigration attorneys. A TRAC report published in January indicated that 30% of migrants with cases in U.S. immigration courts had attorneys legally representing them; that’s a substantial drop, down from 65% five years earlier.

Lopez said seeking asylum in the United States is a “fraught” process, especially for those who don’t have qualified legal assistance to help avoid pitfalls along the way.

Sacramento free monthly legal clinics

That’s why the Sacramento Family Unity, Education, and Legal Network was created during the Trump presidency. Also known as the Sacramento FUEL Network, the coalition of community groups including pro bono attorneys work together to help Sacramento’s immigrant and refugee population.

NorCal Resist, a local group of community advocates, is among FUEL Network partners. Autumn Gonzalez, an employment attorney, helps lead free monthly legal help clinics in Sacramento for those preparing to file applications for asylum.

Gonzalez said newcomers seeking asylum who can’t work immediately or afford to pay several thousands of dollars to retain an attorney are “stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

She said they have trained volunteers, some law students and others who have already gone through the asylum process, who guide immigrants through the application form at the legal clinics. And the clinics have licensed attorneys, such as Gonzalez, supervise the events.

Those seeking asylum have to file the application within a year of their arrival in the country, a strict deadline.

“It’s a time crunch for some people,” Gonzalez said. “They want to get everything right, and you want to submit it on time.”

The clinics used to help 50 to 60 applicants each year. Gonzalez said now they assist more than 100 applicants a year. The most recent NorCal Resist legal clinic in mid-March assisted 16 applicants with volunteers from the UC Davis School of Law.

NorCal Resist currently has 200 applicants on the legal clinic waiting list. Gonzalez said they sometimes conduct triage and move ahead applicants facing a quickly approaching filing deadline.

She said many immigrants find it difficult to understand the intense hatred they find here after being told for many years the U.S. would be understanding and welcoming.

“I think (the political rhetoric) definitely creates an atmosphere of fear,” Gonzalez said. “But we create a connection with the community here, establishing trust with them.”

Carmona of PICO California said national politicians on both sides of the aisle need to get their acts together and pass comprehensive immigration reform.

“It’s enough with all of the rhetoric, with the political stunts, with the dehumanization,” Carmona said. “We’re tired of it. Our families are tired of it. Our communities are tired of it.”