IMMIGRATION LAWYERS

As I write this on Martin Luther King Day, shortly after President Biden’s visit to El Paso, I’m reminded of my days as a middle school teacher prior to going to law school. Princeton University’s annual MLK Day essay contest asked students to answer the question: What would Dr. King say about immigration if he were alive today? In addition to being a teacher, I wrote a blog—Nonviolent Migration—that discussed this very subject. So, Princeton used my blog as a resource, and my students were the only students outside the state of New Jersey allowed to participate.

Today, I’d like to pose a slightly different question: What does Dr. King’s philosophy of non-violent direct action call us to say and do in response to President Biden’s abdication to protect the human rights of asylum seekers?

First, some history: Years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the I Have a Dream speech, Dr. King confronted the most progressive President the U.S. had ever known, Lyndon Baines Johnson. He did so publicly and repeatedly, because although LBJ was an ally, Dr. King understood that “justice delayed is justice denied”, and that “‘wait’ almost always means ‘never’.” Dr. King knew that if he did not make President Johnson strain under the heavy pressure he and other civil rights leaders could bring to bear, that the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act might be delayed indefinitely, denying justice not just to his generation, but to all future generations.

This, then, is an appropriate analogy to the present moment. There is no denying that President Biden is an ally of all of us who value human rights, due process, and restoring the United States’ role as a refuge for the unjustly persecuted throughout the world. But there is also no denying that Biden’s administration will only act if we force it to act, because “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

Nearly 18 months ago, the Biden administration published a proposed rule to change who would adjudicate the asylum applications of recent border crossers. After an active period of public comment, that rule became final over 7 months ago. Yet the Biden administration refuses to apply this new regulation, which would greatly improve the process, to El Paso.

Perhaps the Biden administration thinks it can delay justice for asylum seekers in El Paso indefinitely. Perhaps it would tell us to “wait”, when in fact, it means “never”. Those oppressed by such delay must demand justice now, even from our ally, President Biden. We must demand justice repeatedly and publicly until President Biden feels as much pressure as LBJ did.

DHS must bring the new Asylum Processing Rule to El Paso, even if it requires opening a new asylum office in El Paso and hiring dozens of new officers to staff it or transferring existing asylum officers from Houston or other asylum offices.

We have waited long enough for this must needed improvement. Justice has been denied too long already.