178 Groups Denounce Biden Administration's Continued Violation of Refugee Protections

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : The United States helped draft the Refugee Convention in the wake of World War II, and, as a U.S. Senator, you were a co-sponsor of the U.S. Refugee Act, which affirmed in U.S. law the right to seek asylum.
49% : Critical steps include restarting asylum processing along the border, ending policies that block people from seeking asylum at our ports of entry, providing prompt and fair asylum decisions, rejecting the use of expedited removal and immigration detention, and launching legal representation and community-based case support initiatives.
46% : The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has specifically called on the United States to "swiftly lift the public health-related asylum restrictions that remain in effect at the border and to restore access to asylum for the people whose lives depend on it, in line with international legal and human rights obligations."
46% : The bi-partisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which monitored this process over many years, found that CBP officers failed in more than half of cases where monitors were present during interviews to take steps required under U.S. law to screen asylum seekers.
43% : Many of our organizations have also written to DHS to object to the sharp increase in detention of adults seeking asylum, which has accompanied the administration's use of expedited removal, and urged that neither adults nor families be jailed while their asylum cases proceed.
42% : We are gravely concerned that the administration issued a new order this week to continue to block and expel asylum-seeking families and adults to life-threatening dangers, is escalating the use of fundamentally flawed expedited removal, has massively increased detention of adults seeking protection, and continues to make statements that undermine the right to asylum.
42% : Fairness, due process and compliance with U.S. obligations to protect people seeking asylum should not be sacrificed for speed.
40% : In addition, many refugees will be deprived of their right to seek asylum in the United States as a result of DHS's announcement that it will subject families to expedited removal (a process already being used against adult asylum seekers), despite its long history of due process failures.
40% : In 15 percent of cases the Commission observed CBP improperly order asylum seekers deported who had indicated a fear of return.
39% : The DHS announcement also suggests that families will be subjected to expedited removal for coming to the United States the "wrong way," thereby inflicting expedited removal as a penalty for entry, which is impermissible under the Refugee Convention, and completely disingenuous, as people cannot generally seek asylum at U.S. ports of entry due to the administration's failure to uphold refugee law at the border.
37% : We were particularly dismayed by recent comments indicating that people "should not come" to the United States to seek asylum and that they could instead seek "asylum" from their home countries - a message that sends the wrong signal to rights-violating governments looking to slam their doors shut to the persecuted.
35% : We continue to be deeply disappointed that some administration statements undermine the right to seek asylum, attempt to justify treating asylum seekers and migrants as threats to public health, and tout efforts to provide protection for people "closer to their homes" - a phrase often used in xenophobic rhetoric aimed at denying people protection in the United States.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.