Asylum seekers can be monitored cheaply. Here are some suggestions

Our asylum laws permit refugees who have either arrived at our borders or in our country to request asylum.

It is perfectly legal to request asylum when arriving at our borders, and it is a civil misdemeanor for people to present themselves after crossing into our country. A civil misdemeanor is not a crime. It is the equivalent of getting caught fishing without a fishing license.

We would never jail and separate American families for such a minor violation, as it would be considered cruel and unusual punishment. Yet, our government inhumanely separated parents and children legally seeking asylum at our borders and those who committed a minor violation by entering the country before requesting asylum.

The Department of Homeland Security has long had procedures in place to vet people to ensure that only those who meet the definition of refugee are granted asylum. Our current president, by executive order, changed these procedures, choosing instead to separate families under a policy of “zero tolerance.”

The policy inflicted cruelty on people whose goal was to flee crime-ridden countries where unbelievable atrocities were taking place. Asylum seekers sought safety in the United States. Instead, families were locked in cages and cells under brutal conditions and separated by huge geographical distances.

Would you ever recover from the heart-wrenching terror of being forcefully separated from your child at the hands of a government that didn’t even tell you where your child was being sent? Will these abused children experience irreparable harm? Pediatricians have condemned our government’s depravity.

Make no mistake, the president’s decision to separate and lock up family members was not in response to any crisis at the border.

A few thousand people were involved. The real problem is that there is already a huge backlog of asylum cases. The Department of Homeland Security screens people requesting asylum for credible fear, and then these people move onto hearings in front of immigration judges. It is estimated that the backlog of cases is around 700,000.

To alleviate the problem, we need to hire more judges.

Instead, our tax dollars were used to terrify and separate families. Then the president signed another executive order to reverse some of the actions of his first executive order, and now we are paying for DNA tests because we didn’t keep track of where we sent the children.

We pay about $320 per night to a private jail contractor to detain a mother and her children who have been reunited, and we are paying to erect more structures to incarcerate families when the law states we can’t imprison children for more than twenty days.

Additionally, we are paying to attempt to defend these actions in court. Alternatively, we could be using inexpensive technologies — like ankle monitors at about $4 per day — to allow asylum seekers to live in our communities while waiting for court dates.

Another option is supervision by social workers or community groups. A 2012 program run by Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services cost just $24 a day for each asylum seeker.

Our laws were written to protect people from government overreach and abuse. Instead, the administration chose to ignore decency, American values, basic human rights, and the intent of our laws.

Please continue to demand that every family is reunited and those granted asylum are settled into welcoming and loving communities. We are a land of good, caring people. Please do not let our government abandon our responsibility to right this egregious wrong.

If you have any questions or comments, please contact us at tricitieswaimmigrantcoalition@gmail.com.

This story was originally published July 30, 2018 at 2:18 PM.