Immigration Enforcement Un-American?

[DanaC]

What can counsel do here? It's not like even the smoothest lawyer can convince a judge the illegal in custody wasn't in the US... which happens to be the violation in question.

Unless they can be proved to have a case for asylum.


[eta] we engage in much the same behaviour over here towards failed asylum seekers. Worse probably. Given how incredibly easy it is to 'fail' an asylum application that means there are likely to be people who've fled from the vilest persecution and violence being dragged from their hostels in the early hours of the morning and shoved on a plane to their (categorised 'safe') country of origin. A recent example was a man who was sent back to Afghanistan wherupon he was brutally killed by the Taleban (the people he'd been fleeing from). I know of several people who've been forcibly returned to Zimbabwe, Republic of Congo, Iraq. Several have 'disappeared' in their country, others are known to have been killed. I know of torture victims, bodies criss crossed with damage whose applications have been refused and their torture disbelieved. A recent investigation into the immigration system characterised it as operating a 'culture of disbelief'. This is how a 16 year old boy becomes recatergorised as 26 (there's a form they fill in where they assign age if no proof of birthdate can be provided. My mum's dealt with several such cases) and then held in an adult detention centre; or how an 8 year old boy alone in the country could be left without assistance or legal counsel and then have his case dismissed for a 'lack of credibility'.

I'm not sure if they actually brought it in yet, but there was talk recently of a change in the law to allow lone children to be deported to their country of origin. A fucking Labour government. Thatcher wouldn't have dared.