Hanlon’s Razor: US Immigration Security Theater (Letter 1)
In October 2023, TFS contributor Tumen Tushinov and his wife crossed the US-Mexico border in order to claim asylum. Their journey took them from Russian-occupied Buryatia to Mongolia, to Georgia, to Turkey, and then to Mexico. After spending well over $10,000 on lawyers to apply for a “talent visa”, Tumen was rejected and was almost out of time to remain abroad. A return to Russia would mean certain danger - Tumen has marked himself as a political subversive and is involved with organizations that openly oppose the Russian government. If that wasn’t enough, the Russian government does not take kindly to its citizens running off, especially young men of fighting age who could be “better” used as cannon fodder for the war in Ukraine. Tumen’s decision to finally flee Russia had much to do with the ritual forced conscription happening in villages just like his, in Ulan-Ude.
Despite Tumen’s best efforts to follow proper procedures for a border crossing in October, he and his wife were separated and Tumen was detained in Fort Isabel, Texas. You can read the initial details here. Tumen was then transferred to the ICE detention center in Aurora, Colorado, where he has remained for the past seven months. He worked tirelessly on his appeal for asylum, and when the day finally came for a hearing before an immigration judge and a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) attorney, we felt confident we were going to fulfill every criteria for permanent residence and refugee status. What we didn’t account for - a racist, incompetent judge who had already made up her mind before hearing a single word any of us had to say. After almost eight hours across two separate hearings, Tumen’s request was denied and the judge ordered his removal from the country - deportation. Ed Gallo goes into more detail about the hearing here.
This brings us to the present, where Tumen has to make one final stand. He is able to appeal the decision and stand before the Board of Immigration Appeals, but this time we are taking no chances. Read here about the way Tumen found a reputable lawyer who validated our frustrations and freely talked about the malicious incompetence of the judge.
All that’s left is for us to wait patiently for the lawyer to work his magic, but there’s the matter of paying him. Below you will read the first of Tumen’s letters to the public, hand-written from the Aurora ICE Processing Center. PLEASE NOTE: The Fight Site is not directly profiting from these fundraisers or providing any of the funds afforded to the site to Tumen, who is obviously not a current active contributor to the site. We are simply using the platform to bring attention to Tumen’s personal fundraiser, which is located separately on Ko-Fi. The following is a transcription of Tumen’s second hand-written letter, edited by Ed Gallo.
READ TUMEN’S INTRODUCTORY LETTER HERE
——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.
Hello, my name is Tumen. You may also know me as Iggy. I entered the US on October 18th, 2023, with my wife, with intent to seek political asylum after trying and failing to obtain a visa. We did so by using the official US government app called CBP One. The reason we did so was because the conditions in Russia became unlivable and we’ve exhausted all of our valid options of resettling elsewhere.
CBP One was supposedly created to filter and screen asylum seekers prior to allowing them entry to the US, so it could then grant them automatic parole status as opposed to those who enter the US via other means - such as simply “jumping the fence” so to speak. For a while, that’s how it worked: CBP One entrants were processed at Ports of Entry promptly released, whereas other asylum claimants were sent to detention for an average period of 1.5-3 months to go through the Credible Fear (CF) process. In that process, asylum seekers are screened by USCIS asylum officers and ICE, and then released after their Credible Fear has been confirmed and they were proven not to be a security risk. Naturally, there are many, many caveats to how the CF process works in practice, but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s focus on how CBP One isn’t actually worth shit. Then we can talk about how the entire asylum process in the US is a clusterfuck that amounts to nothing more than a giant waste of US taxpayers’ money at best, and a money-laundering scheme at worst. Let’s get it on.
Cock & Ball Piss One: How to get yourself stuck in jail for 6+ months.
CBP One is one of those ideas that sound cool on paper but falls apart to itty-bitty pieces in practice. It’s like an over-moist “food porn” burger that would actually be impossible to eat because it would be soggy as fuck. On paper you submit your info in advance, providing passport scans, photos and other info for CBP and by extension the DHS to check. They prep a temporary “alien entry permit”, and you get your appointment date. On your appointment date, a US Customs and Border Protection officer leads you through the port of entry, takes your fingerprints, and lets you go with a Notice to Appear in Immigration Court. Then you submit your i589, which is the official asylum plea document, and you apply for a Social Security Number (SSN) and work permit. It sounds straightforward enough.
Except, in practice, CBP One exists in a legal gray area that nobody in the entire US immigration system can quite figure out yet. I’ll get into the many contradictions and inconsistencies later, but for now let’s focus on the “automatic parole” thing.
After letting a large number (tens of thousands) of CBP One asylum-seekers into the US and handing them the i94 entry for their SSN and work permit application, CBP then began arbitrarily detaining entrants, seemingly at random, for transfer into ICE custody. Nobody knows for sure what the rationale is, and even immigration attorneys (many of whom received quite the influx of terrified and bewildered clients) are stumped as to why that happens. In September and October of 2023, nearly all CBP One entrants (including yours truly) were detained, with a sizable chunk yet to be released, nearly eight months later.
Now, while detention in ICE custody is a terrible experience for an enormous amount of all sorts of equally valid reasons, the normally (until now) short detention periods were offset by the overall net benefit - which was supposed to be a shot at a fresh start in a more-or-less decent country, comparatively speaking. However, things begin to fall apart after one’s detention period surpasses three months. I will talk about the detention conditions later, but for now let’s consider the reasons why people are being held for so long.
The primary answer is: DHS is stupid. I’m not saying this because I’m bitter, though I totally am. I’m saying this because after seven-plus months of immigration jail (and that’s really what a detention center is) I’ve seen way too many examples of neglect and incompetence to think otherwise. Let’s begin with the fundamental legal flaw in CBP One - CBP One entrants cannot post bond. We are, for whatever reason, ineligible for it. Mind you that in the US, even convicted felons with extensive rap sheets can and do bond out of jail. Drug traffickers, hooligans of all shapes and sizes, even murderers post bond and are free to go. Whereas, CBP One asylum seekers who have done nothing except ask the US government for help, cannot! To add insult to injury, “fence-hoppers” regularly bond out after two and a half or so months on average.
The pet theory of detainees (inmates really, at this point, some of us have been detained longer than “assault with a deadly weapon” convicts) in our “dorm” (cell unit) is that it’s them pesky legal gray area technicalities wreaking havoc with the usual US Immigration procedures. By taking up the responsibility of advanced processing and paroling of CBP One entrants, the DHS also claims jurisdiction over us, rendering immigration courts unable to grant the ability to post bond. The only means of release available to us is being paroled by our ICE Deportation officers. We didn’t technically violate the US border, except we also somehow did, in the eyes of US immigration law. It’s like the US government just shrugged at us when figuring out if we are illegal aliens or not.
The confusion doesn’t end there. According to ICE, who do drop by once in a blue moon, and when the stars and planets align, the judges have the right to reclassify us from “arriving aliens” to “aliens not admitted or paroled”, making us eligible for bond. Except, DHS legal advisors are either unaware of that, or purposely fail to inform the judges of this option. Regardless of if it’s true or not, ICE certainly failed to inform the judges of this option, especially when they tick off a box saying “I wish for judicial review of my custody” without our consent when giving us NIAs.
More absurdly, ICe has the authority to grant bonds, they just pass on the responsibility to EOIR, which has no jurisdiction…except ICE says they totally do, but DHS says no they don’t. Have I mentioned that ICE answers to DHS, and DHS oversees the USCIS and CBP besides? Have I mentioned that none of these acronym organizations actually keep up communications? The Immigration Court is its own thing, and they don’t talk to ICE either. There have been instances where people were about to win asylum, but ICE and DHS paroled them right before the ruling had been formalized, and those people were forced to restart the judicial process on the outside. Sometimes they have to wait another two to three years, because the EOIR is routinely overwhelmed with claimants who never show up! More about that later!
If you’re confused - don’t worry, so is the US government. In the end, the question of our continued detention turns into a game of passing the buck while people suffer and wither away in highly mismanaged detention centers.
So, what about parole? This part of the system is also full of holes, just like a hovercraft is full of eels, who would have guessed? In order to be paroled, at least according to ICE, you have to have a sponsor in the US who can provide sponsor documents such as proof of legal US status (citizenship, green card), tax and rent documents, etc. There is a bigass list of those documents they provide. The sponsor vows to house, feed and clothe the paroled alien for the duration of his or her judicial proceedings. Except, in practice, that’s all bogus too! Who does and doesn’t get paroled is entirely arbitrary too!
Pa-roll’d
“Yeah, I like, totally know this guy.”
What’s his name?
“Steve.”
A Russian named Steve?
“Yeah.”
Parole is something every detainee prays for, probably more than they do for the salvation of their eternal soul from hell. They probably pray for parole more than for their debt collectors back home to catch ass cancer and die (more about that later!) but that process is just fucked. It’s totally fucked. Let’s go over the reasons why.
There is no consistency to it.
You need a sponsor package for a bond hearing too, but whether the judge and the DHS legal advisor are more or less strict with the criteria is entirely up to them, so are the resulting bond amounts. I’ve seen people with blatantly bogus sponsors (usually paid sponsors who take a $2,000 - $5,000 fee for sending packages) get bonds of $1500, and people with sponsors who are their legally-confirmed immediate family get bonds of up to $15,000.
So there’s that, but also ICE themselves don’t really stick to a set standard. What passes for a good sponsor package in one detention in one state wouldn’t fly with other ICE officers in a different detention in a different state. One example is Colorado, where I am detained, which boasts the highest refusal rate for parole of asylum seekers. The criteria they prioritize are also not necessarily the same criteria DHS legal advisors and immigration judges tend to focus on. So, in the end, not only is it all up to luck whether or not you get a mellow judge and DHS attorney, but also it’s entirely up to luck if your ICE officer is a reasonable person. Which leads us to…Sponsorship packages are really just a formality.
Everything is arbitrary, parole regulations included. DHS and ICE ultimately maintain the final discretion on when and how they let people go. If they want, they can just let you go on your own recognizance. When they parole people, what should happen is that you ought to be outfitted with an ankle monitor, and then you are obligated to go to your sponsor who will house you, feed you, and clothe you, until your EOIR proceedings are over. You will be given periodic appointments with ICE who are to make sure you follow parole regulations.
In practice though, the monitors are rarely used, if ever, and people are usually just spat out from detention onto the streets. Paroled migrants are often not even given valid alien entry permits, which could then be used for SSN and work permit registration. “Fuckin’ figure it out”, ICE says. Ostensibly you can then obtain the alien entry permit when you meet with your ICE officer in the state of your sponsor, but that is generally not advisable. When caught in a bad mood, ICE officers can and do detain people a second time for arbitrary reasons. There have been incidents in which people who were paroled years ago and have obtained SSN, have obtained work and entry permits, and have been working legally in the US and paying taxes, were detained because ICE simply decided to detain them.ICE doesn’t care much for in-person registration visits anyway; you can notify ICE of your whereabouts online. You can also tell ICE that you’ll be switching states, and ICE usually doesn’t care and merely transfers your case to the state of your choosing. ICE also doesn’t care if you rent a house instead of living with your sponsor, leading to a bizarre mix of benign indifference, benevolence, and arbitrary cruelty…
—————————————————————————————————————————————————————-
The letter ends there, as we patiently wait for Tumen to finish hand-writing his next letter, with one hand broken (Tumen’s hands are 0-2 vs. furniture). The next installment will feature information on security risks, background checks, and other “bogus buzzwords” ICE uses to justify holding people in detention.