VietPress USA (Jan. 29th, 2017): Please read this news on the Muslimbanned peopl at JFK Airport:
Muslim ban detainees at JFK Airport
are being pressured to revoke legal immigration status
President Donald Trump's so-called Muslim ban executive
order has already prevented scores of people from entering the U.S., including
some with legal immigration status. Late Saturday, though, a U.S. district
court temporarily halted the deportation of those travelers. While the
travelers, citizens of seven blacklisted Muslim-majority countries, are not
supposed to be deported, many are still languishing in detention in airports
across the U.S.
Immigration officials, though, are trying to find another
way to send those travelers home: keeping them from making it into the country
by revoking their legal status.
According to lawyers spread out in teams across John F.
Kennedy International Airport in New York, multiple detainees are being
pressured to sign a form typically called a "withdrawal of application for
admission." Despite having the long-term legal right to stay in the
country, the scared and nervous detainees, the lawyers said, are being asked to
revoke their status so they can be sent back to their countries of origin.
"What we've heard is that the detainees are told that
they can sign the forms, go home, it'll all be better and it'll be like this
all never happened," Melissa Trent, a representative of the lawyers, said
in an interview on Sunday morning at Kennedy Airport. "It gives them
authority to put these people back on planes and send them home."
The forms are being presented in English to people who don't
speak the language well. One organizer with the lawyers said by phone late
Saturday night that they'd seen one of the signed forms firsthand. According to
the lawyers at Kennedy AIrport, the detainees should not be signing anything.
This is a tactic familiar to immigration lawyers who have
dealt with Customs and Border Patrol officials in the past. Immigration officials
trying to turn away detainees will tell someone that giving up their lawful
status is an easy out, and that the immigrant won't have a deportation on their
record.
Several lawyers said in interviews that the language barrier
is often used as a weapon against immigrants in these circumstances.
"They're told it's a good deal, because they're told
that they'll be released from detention and go home, but they often don't
understand the full depth of what they're signing," said Lauren Reiff, an
immigration lawyer with the New York Legal Assistance Group in an interview.
Reiff was at Kennedy airport as a
volunteer.
The corps of lawyers who've been camped out at Kennedy
Airport's terminal 4, swilling coffee at a cafe where they've set up their home
base, have so far managed to stop any of the detainees here from being sent
home. Lawyers have filed at least 20 habeas corpus petitions from the airport.
Four of the detainees were released Saturday, leaving at least 16 still in
detention — and a dearth of official information from immigration authorities.
When word came down at the terminal 4 that there'd be
deportees on a 1:30 p.m. Eastern flight out of the country, Rep. Hakeem
Jeffries (D-N.Y.) arrived at Kennedy Airport to speak with immigration
officials and assure families that won't be happening.
"We're hopeful that these individuals will be released
on a rolling basis throughout the day," Jeffries told reporters outside
the airport. "The entire executive order is a farce. It's a smokescreen.
It has nothing to do with trying to keep this country safe. And we urge the
Trump administration to abandon it immediately."
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