Immigration Officials Use Secretive Gang Databases to Deny Migrant Asylum Claims

[James48]

Source: GovExec.com

With scant public notice, federal immigration officials are relying on databases run by foreign police and militaries to check whether migrants crossing the United States border have gang affiliations, which would allow officials to detain and eventually deport them.

The information is being provided through a new “fusion” intelligence-gathering center in El Salvador that is funded by the State Department and works in tandem with the Homeland Security Department.

But legal experts and human rights advocates say the government has kept the use of databases at the border largely secret, subverting potential challenges to the reliability of the information in them. An attorney in Texas recently discovered that her Salvadoran client had been falsely accused of being in the MS-13 gang based on intelligence from the center. The man was jailed in a maximum-security facility for violent criminals for six months, and his two children were taken away.

Government attorneys, pressed repeatedly in court to provide evidence, eventually dropped the allegation of gang membership against him without explanation.


Read more: https://www.govexec.com/defense/2019/07/immigration-officials-use-secretive-gang-databases-deny-migrant-asylum-claims/158269/

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Now they are asking the police and military of those countries to name names in an attempt to deport everybody back.

[sandensea]

1. And we all know these rightwing Latin regimes would 'never' incriminate people for political reasons

Just ask Brazil's Bolsonazi and his attack dog Moro

https://www.democraticunderground.com/110867852

- or Argentina's Macri.

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/03/20/dont-spy-for-me-argentina/

[DENVERPOPS]

2. And they sure

And the countries sure wouldn't tell us if they were criminals or gang members. If they informed us they were bad asses, then they would be stuck with these people and those countries are in hopes that the criminals or gang member DO leave their country and go to the U.S. and we would be the LAST people they would tell that they are bad asses to get rid of them.

[sandensea]

4. +1

They'd gladly smear people they have a political (or personal) gripe with - but would seldom inform us of real security risks.

As far as they're concerned, the faster their criminal element leave their own countries the better.

[ArizonaLib]

5. This was the point to the precedent of John Lennon v United States of America

Lennon v. United States, 387 F. Supp. 561 (S.D.N.Y. 1975)

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/387/561/1672537/

If I read this correctly, the cause of action (the 'second' one) wherein Lennon was denied discretionary relief of deportation was that his requests were automatically denied repeatedly without being prejudged, in other words, officials and the judges' routine denials based on their own understanding and conscience alone were not enough to deny relief or appellate rights, despite Lennon's admitted UK conviction. He was supposed to have the right to at least argue the conviction's circumstances were extraordinary and upon appeal were likely to be reversed (the detective who charged Lennon with possession later admitted in court to planting illegal drug related evidence in cases related to high profile individuals in England; Lennon plead guilty as a health precaution to Yoko's pregnancy. She had a history of miscarriages. Afterward, they left for the US).

In other words, deporting someone based on wishes of high level government officials, or immigration judges for the hell of it is in conflict with an individual's rights (and for those conservative idiots who want to assert that the constitution only applies to US citizens, it is the law of the land, not just the law of US citizens).

[912gdm]

6. inb4 axe

[tanyev]

7. Let me guess. This 'intelligence' is something along the lines of,

"We have reports that there is a gang member named Jose Sanchez."