Our report this month includes news stories about the damaging effects of detention; the criminalization of humanitarian aid; and the journeys still ahead for released asylum seekers. Asylum Seekers in Detention: Though seeking asylum is a civil process, applicants often find themselves incarcerated in maximum-security, criminal-style prisons as they wait months or longer for their court dates. This indefinite confinement in overcrowded and substandard conditions is, in fact, endured by all … [Read more...]

Our report this month covers threats to the U.S. asylum system—directing asylum officers to reject applicants wishing to enter the country and denying bond to eligible asylum seekers in detention—and environmental factors that help explain growing migration from Central America. Concerns of Asylum Officers: U.S. asylum officers are starting to speak up—at their union meetings and to media—about their coercive work atmosphere under the Trump administration and its recently instituted … [Read more...]

Our report this month covers the conditions that drive Central American migration; due process concerns in a Texas immigration court; a halt to the U.S. policy of requiring asylum seekers to remain in Mexico as their claims are processed; and the KBI’s new migrant center, now under construction and designed for expanded services and programming. Reasons for Migration: For the past five years, photographer Fred Ramos has documented the political, social, and environmental conditions that … [Read more...]

KBI Media Report: December 2018–January 2019 Our media report this month is one that reveals the far-reaching impact of U.S. immigration policies on migrant families, in the U.S. and in their countries of origin, as they cope with the traumatic aftermath of extended detention, court delays, and most tragically, the death of a child. Family Separation Update: As immigrant children, forcibly taken from their parents at the U.S.–Mexico border last year, are reunited with their parents, the … [Read more...]