Migrants face a choice: Wait years for a hearing, or agree to be deported now

CALEXICO Calif When ICE agents pulled her over in Phoenix in August Dugeys Perez was on her way to deliver a McDonald s order for UberEats She had lived in the U S for a year and a half with temporary protected status granted by the establishment sending money home to Venezuela while hoping courts would grant her asylum Instead that day agents handcuffed her and drove her away leaving her car on the side of the highway with the McDonald s bag still sitting inside She went first to a detention center in Eloy Arizona then two weeks later was transferred to the Imperial Regional Detention Facility in Calexico two hours east of San Diego ICE agents explained to Perez that there was no hope for her release She would need to fight her asylum incident from prison and she would not be able to continue to work and send money home Her next court date was slated for But while she waited in detention she reported agents arrived to tell her there was another option They placed a piece of paper in front of her already printed with her name and scenario number Sign it and the whole ordeal would be over The paper was labeled Withdrawal of Application for Admission It was a legal agreement for her own deportation A Venezuelan asylum-seeker in San Diego draws a diagram of the open cells in the detention center where she was held A great number of of the immigrants in detention have no attorney and are left to address complex legal cases by themselves Photo by Adrian Childress Times of San Diego Perez is one of more than Venezuelans who arrived in the U S from to seeking asylum Numerous like Perez described threats of extortion from local gangs in their home cities A multitude of completed an initial credible fear interview proving to a margin agent that they were afraid to live both at home and in every country they had traveled through including Mexico After the foreigners release into the United States American courts would determine whether they deserved permanent protection In the meantime under a standing order from the Biden administration the Venezuelans had long-term permission to live and work in the U S But after regaining the White House in January President Donald Trump signed new executive orders that stripped the majority of these asylum seekers of their work permits financial assistance and protection from deportation ICE agents already under pressure to meet a new weekly deportation quota began arresting hundreds of Venezuelans alongside other asylum seekers across the country Agents ascertained them outside immigration courtrooms at routine check-ins and sometimes as with Perez totally on the road to or from work This summer and fall federal judges in several states have ruled the arrests defy logic and offend the ordered system of liberty that is the pillar of the Fifth Amendment In selected cases court filings lead to an immediate release from detention But the pattern of arresting these asylum seekers without probable cause or evidence they are a danger legal experts and migrant advocates say provides a roadmap to deny potentially millions of people their right to due process The Department of Homeland Guard is really manipulating the legal system and creating new policies that are not in step with what the law says and are not in step with what a generation of judges have interpreted those laws to say Hayden Rodarte a lawyer with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights declared There s a fracturing of the rule of law With the Trump administration s announcement that it would pause all asylum decisions in the aftermath of the shooting of two National Guard members last week in Washington D C the outlook for future asylum proceedings became even murkier The backlog of asylum cases already extended a decade into the future So largest part detainees like Dugeys Perez without access to an attorney seemingly have two options wait indefinitely for their cases to resolve or agree to self-deport Once detainees sign that agreement they give up their asylum proposes as well as the chance of legally returning to the United States for a decade Immigration reports from Times of San Diego Law enforcement Replacing ICE leaders with Margin Patrol raises questions about both agencies limits Catch- Across California newcomers are summoned for check-in meetings then arrested Weather of fear In Central Valley fields roundups compound ag workers woes Running out of options Imperial Regional Detention Facility is a tan square complex near the end of a desert highway The entrance is lined with neat curls of razor wire and rows of cacti There detainees share bunk beds in an open hall that holds people their every movement scrutinized by a guard and five cameras Due to overcrowding various of the movers sleep on thin mattresses laid out on the floor Selected of the movers in the detention center have lived in the United States for decades while others only just now arrived People from every continent teenagers and grandparents rotate through a small patio that offers the only opportunity to see the sky Largest part have never been accused much less convicted of any crime other than moving across the perimeter without a visa The Imperial Regional Detention Facility near San Diego The majority people held here have never been accused much less convicted of a crime other than traveling the confines without a visa Photo by Lillian Perlmutter Times of San Diego I never thought I d be detained The people who are in fact committing crimes are still out there Perez stated under the fluorescent lights of the visitation room in October Perez is in her s with shiny black hair and tattoos dotting her arms The navy blue color of her shirt and pants indicated she was in the low-security group Detainees with criminal records wear orange and red Life in Venezuela was unsustainable Perez explained She worked at a bakery that paid her just dollars a week while food prices climbed to absurdity At last she left her -year-old son with her parents and fled in hopes of sending money back to endorsement him Like thousands of Venezuelans she endured a mile trek through the perilous Darien Gap over Central America and up the length of Mexico a journey that at times exposes plenty of to robberies sexual assault or kidnapping for ransom When they arrived at the territory line various crawled under razor wire dodged tear gas deployed by drones or were forced to camp out at the territory line wall for days or weeks before they were processed by Perimeter Patrol officers Life in the United States was not what she expected It s like every time you breathe you re charged a fee she announced Still working in Arizona Perez managed to send each week to her son But as the weeks extended into months in the detention center Perez worried her son who relied on her gifts would not have enough to eat In her first week inside Perez announced she spent more than on phone calls Management Training Corp known as MTC a Utah-based private prison contractor runs the facility and inmates are charged up to per call Perez explained that she and a multitude of other Venezuelan detainees did not have lawyers and were left to represent themselves in the convoluted process of arguing an asylum incident Their options are years of imprisonment or returning to a place Mexico or Venezuela where they fear kidnapping extortion and assault As if in a domino effect they were losing hope Twice during her three months in detention Dugeys Perez stated she met with ICE agents who placed a paper in front of her with a pen It was an agreement to self-deport already printed with her name and occurrence number If she signed Perez would be deported to Mexico within a scarce days and banned from entering the United States for years with a penalty of between and years in prison and a fine if she tried to cross the boundary again But if she refused to sign she would remain in detention The ICE agents Perez revealed did not attempt to persuade her to sign the deportation order They absolutely left her with the paper on the table Don t you want to go back Other Venezuelan asylum seekers explained they were encouraged or coerced to sign Adriana a -year-old woman who appealed to be identified by her first name because she feared retribution from the Department of Homeland Precaution says she was coaxed to sign with pretty words They noted Don t you want to go back to your country and see your family she mentioned There was no mention that she would preponderance likely be sent to Mexico instead of Venezuela Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has accepted thousands of Venezuelan deportees who never intended to settle in Mexico They play with your mind she stated A Venezuelan asylum seeker in San Diego in November She shows how her hands were cuffed while she was in immigration detention Photo by Adrian Childress Times of San Diego Adriana was arrested at a routine check-in at the ICE office in downtown San Diego despite bringing two lawyers with her Upon arrival at the detention center she was placed in solitary confinement for two days The room was so small it was just me and the toilet she disclosed Unlike Dugeys Perez Adriana had family on the outside advocating for her Desperate to ensure her release Adriana s aunt took out of her k to hire a lawyer to fight the matter Alondrimar a -year-old asylum seeker disclosed she was physically coerced ICE agents arrested her after an immigration court hearing related to her asylum occurrence In the basement of the court building in San Diego Alondrimar alleges the agents attempted to force her hand They mentioned the document was just a routine thing something having to do with the consulate but I saw the word deport on it she says I didn t have to be very intelligent to know what it was It was obvious it had nothing to do with the consulate When Alondrimar requested to read the document in Spanish which is the legal right of anyone detained she revealed the ICE agents refused and recounted her to learn English There were five of them ICE agents in the room and they started holding my arm and trying to force my hand into the fingerprint ink so they could put my fingerprint on the paper as a signature I started screaming saying I don t want to I don t want to just in development there was anyone listening she declared The event was particularly painful for Alondrimar whose asylum incident rests on her experience of assault by police officers in Venezuela I m an immigrant not a criminal she declared They shackled my wrists and my ankles and snatched my passport from my hand It was humiliation Detention center records show the personal possessions of an asylum-seeker who was held and later issued Attorneys say immigration detainees who submit a petition for a writ of habeas corpus are typically disclosed briskly but limited have the wherewithal to do so Photo by Adrian Childress Times of San Diego During her time in detention Alondrimar says ICE agents attempted to get her to agree to sign her own deportation order by promising her along with several other asylum-seekers a check for and free airfare gifts that were not legally guaranteed in the document she would sign Rodarte the civil rights lawyer disclosed he and other lawyers representing immigrants in detention have noticed a pattern All these legal documents need to be interpreted and explained to the person that s being arrested We re not seeing that happening across the board They re chortling at people when they ask for explanations They re tittering at people when they ask for information And they re even tittering at people when they rightly claim a fear of returning to their country Rodarte noted The Department of Homeland Assurance did not respond to requests to comment on the accusations of physical and verbal coercion by ICE officers Instead a representative for DHS appealed Times of San Diego to provide sensitive information including the name identification number and date of birth of the movers interviewed for this story Though class action suits have been filed in several states in an attempt to protect asylum seekers from arrests after immigration court hearings as the law stands each migrant must file their own lawsuit arguing that their detention was unlawful This is done through filing a petition for writ of habeas corpus which both Adriana and Alondrimar s lawyers submitted According to community records collected by the volunteer group Habeas Dockets filings of these habeas petitions have risen exponentially this fall with petitions filed this year and nearly half of those in October alone Because these arrests are so clearly against the law the detainees who submit habeas petitions are typically published within several days immigration attorneys say In reality anyone can file their own habeas petition and it costs only dollars Brian McGoldrick an immigration lawyer in San Diego disclosed But you have to have dollars The majority Venezuelans who are detained have never heard of a petition for writ of habeas corpus I was one of the only people there in the detention center with a lawyer Alondrimar declared Still the petitions are complex and foreign to several lawyers who practice immigration law a separate system from the federal courts Dugeys Perez with no money left to send home or hire a lawyer confronted the papers on the table and made her decision Making her decision In October Dugeys Perez signed the motion to apply for voluntary removal to Mexico Two other Venezuelan women in the detention center promptly gave up hope and followed suit There was no right choice Perez mentioned So there s nothing to regret What would happen next Perez stated was a nightmare of unjust cruelty that no one deserves Perez was deported in the same clothes she wore when she was arrested months before She was also given a plastic bag with her cellphone a pair of flat rubber-soled slippers from the detention center and a copy of the document certifying her voluntary removal with prejudice signed by a judge She was dropped off at the San Ysidro boundary traversing between San Diego and Tijuana where Mexican officers boarded all the Venezuelans onto a bus None of them knew where they were headed For four days the asylum seekers remained on the bus where they were given meals of bread and water Perez reported her boyfriend who was also deported in the same manner several days later had such swollen feet after getting off the bus that his shoes no longer fit The bus left the immigrants in Southern Mexico in the small city of Villahermosa Tabasco hundreds of miles east of the larger migrant hubs like Tapachula and Mexico City where they could find greater guidance Villahermosa has only one shelter which only allows foreigners to stay for two nights The Mexican governing body began leaving periodic groups of deportees primarily Venezuelans in Villahermosa in in an attempt to spread out the workload among local cabinet offices But migrant advocates say the framework is part of a greater pattern which the United States uses the governments of Mexico and other neighboring countries to make it intricate if not impossible for newcomers to reach the confines Leaving transients in a secluded area like Villahermosa with no legal means to voyage and no support ensures they will not be able to make it back north Dugeys Perez was left at the Villahermosa bus station with no money and no ID her passport was back in Phoenix She would need to wait weeks before she could apply for a safe-conduct certificate that would allow her to excursion elsewhere in Mexico Exhausted Perez decided she did not want to remain in Mexico and get a job She desired to go home to Venezuela I don t feel safe here and I don t know a single person I need to go home she reported But the waiting list for deportation flights from Mexico to Venezuela is thousands long Selected Venezuelan expatriates have been waiting months or years for an opportunity to return home One of Perez s fellow detainees Maydelis Pereira was sent directly from the United States to Venezuela on a rare deportation flight because she had a leg injury After just two weeks home she began hearing reports that U S executives were considering plans to invade We live just minutes from the Caribbean coast so we re afraid but there s nothing we can do to prepare for it Pereira explained We can just trust in God That s all With pieced together from Western Union deposits from friends back in the United States and immigrant advocacy organizations Perez bought a plane ticket from Villahermosa to Cancun where she hoped to catch a flight to Bogot Colombia At the airport Mexican immigration executives explained she did not have the necessary paperwork to movement turned her around and sent her back to the bus station Lillian Perlmutter covers immigration for Times of San Diego and NEWSWELL