Attorneys call for investigation into Houston’s asylum screening process

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not respond to a request for comment from the Houston Chronicle.

A credible fear interview is a critical first step for migrants who arrive at the border and are pursuing an asylum case. Failing the credible fear interview with the asylum officer generally leads to the person’s removal from the United States. If a migrant passes the interview, he or she is allowed to stay in the country until an immigration judge can hear the full asylum case at a later date.

The Houston asylum office performs a large share of these screenings – 67 percent of all credible fear interviews nationwide from 2014 to early 2019, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report.

The complaint says that while issues it raises occur in other asylum offices, “the Houston Asylum Office has a particularly egregious record of conducting these screenings and we therefore ask that you investigate the Houston Asylum Office’s conduct.”

Critically, the threshold for passing a credible fear interview is relatively low – a migrant must show “significant possibility” that they “could establish eligibility for asylum,” according to the Immigration and Nationality Act.

“It’s by design, a very lenient standard,” said Victoria Neilson, attorney for the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the organizations filing the complaint.

Houston immigration attorney Ruby Powers said credible fear interviews are “asylum light.”

“It’s supposed to screen out claims where there’s clearly no merit,” she said.

But the complaint argues that the Houston asylum officers have demonstrated a pattern of mishandling these initial asylum screenings, based on the experiences of 30 migrants.

“They’re (officers) asking for things like corroboration, external evidence to back up their claims, which is not something that’s required at this stage of the hearing,” said Neilson.

The complaint outlines the experience of a Venezuelan man who didn’t pass his credible fear interview despite telling the asylum officer he was beaten and detained by the Venezuelan government because of his political beliefs. The Houston asylum officer told the man he could simply change his political activities to avoid persecution.

Another man from Burkina Faso was denied a request for an interpreter of his native language Bissa, which led to factual errors in his case, according to the complaint, and he failed his credible fear interview.

“People who are running for their lives to escape violence in their home countries deserve to share their story in their own language with someone who will listen and follow the law,” said Edna Yang, co-executive director of American Gateways, an immigrant rights organization based in Austin.

The complaint drills down on just one aspect of an overwhelmed asylum system.

“We’re filing a complaint to deal with one specific and very important problem with the Houston asylum office and credible fear interview processes. There are many other problems,” said Victoria Neilson.

The growing immigration court backlog has climbed to a monstrous 1.7 million cases, according to court data provided by Syracuse University. And pleading a final asylum case with a judge can take years because of immigration judge’s overwhelmed dockets.

Slammed Courts: The immigration court backlog is growing faster than ever

Additionally, Houston’s asylum grant rates are low compared to other immigration courts in states like New York and California.

Complaints about the Houston asylum office are coming as the Biden administration is looking to shift the responsibility of making final asylum decisions to asylum officers — not immigration judges — in an effort to hasten lengthy wait times for asylum hearings.

To improve credible fear interviews, the complaint recommends that the Houston asylum office wait until someone has been in the country for at least two days before they perform asylum screenings, as the migrant has likely faced significant trauma during their journey. They also ask officers to use trauma-informed techniques to interview migrants, among other recommendations like providing rare language interpreters.

“I think they’re all very actionable ideas,” said Ruby Powers, who has represented various clients seeking asylum in the Houston area, but was not involved in this complaint.

“(It) brought a lot of really good arguments to light,” she said.