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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
People Are "Disappearing" Since Trump Took Office. Here's What That Means.
Last month, Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was scheduled for a routine hearing in immigration court. But as Mother Jones reports, he never made it because he'd been whisked off without due process to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) along with 230 Venezuelan immigrants. Since President Donald Trump began to carry out what he claimed would be the 'largest deportation' campaign in U.S. history earlier this year, there have been a number of cases where immigrants like Cornejo Pulgar have just 'disappeared.' In January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man working a delivery job and picking up food at a McDonald's in Detroit, Michigan, was deported and 'disappeared' to El Salvador after taking a wrong turn into Canada. 'Ricardo's story by itself is incredibly tragic — and we don't know how many Ricardos there are,' Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center who tried to locate Prada Vásquez, told The New York Times. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ultimately confirmed to him that he had been deported but did not divulge his destination. After the abductions, families of men like Prada Vásquez search, but the names of their loved ones disappear from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's online detainee locator. Could what's happening to immigrants under Trump be classified as 'enforced disappearances'? We spoke with academics and researchers who study how rogue states 'disappear' people. First, what does it mean to 'disappear' a person? According to the United Nations, an 'enforced disappearance' occurs when agents of the state (or groups acting with its authorization and support) arrest, detain, abduct or in any other way deprive a person of their liberty. The state then refuses to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person concerned. If you're wondering whether this is legal or illegal, it's actually neither. 'The inherent consequence of an enforced disappearance is that the person is placed outside the protection of the law, in a sort of legal limbo,' said Gabriella Citroni, an adjunct professor of international human rights law at the university of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy, and a chair-rapporteur of UN expert group on enforced or involuntary disappearances. Unlike other crimes under international law, such as torture, enforced disappearances were not prohibited by a universal legally binding instrument before a UN Convention came into effect in 2010. Disappeared people frequently include political opponents, protesters, human rights defenders and community leaders, students and members of minorities, Citroni said. Related: "We Don't Import Food": 31 Americans Who Are Just So, So Confused About Tariffs And US Trade 'Typically, enforced disappearances are used to suppress freedom of expression or religion, or legitimate civil strife demanding democracy, as well as against persons involved in the defense of the land, natural resources, and the environment, and to fight organized crime or counter terrorism,' she said. Enforced disappearance functions as a tool of terror in two ways, said Oscar Lopez, a journalist based in Mexico City working on a book about the origins of forced disappearance during Mexico's 'Dirty War.' 'First, the victim is deprived of due process and often subjected to torture as well as the psychological hell of not knowing what's going to happen to them and possibly fearing for their life,' he told HuffPost. Secondly, enforced disappearance forces families and communities into a state of painful uncertainty, Lopez said. 'They don't know whether their relative is alive or dead and toggle between desperate hope and unbearable despair.' When disappearances occur frequently enough, they can leave entire communities in a state of terror, unsure of who might be taken next, Lopez said. What has happened to disappeared people in the past? What happens to people involuntarily disappeared depends 'very much on the context' in which they are taken, Lopez said. But generally speaking, if the person is kept alive, they're held in state custody for an indeterminate amount of time without the ability to communicate with their family or legal counsel ― aka they're 'held incommunicado.' If the person is killed, their bodies are often disposed of in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for them to be found. 'This can mean burying them in unmarked graves, cremating their remains, or, as happened in Latin America, throwing their corpses out to sea,' he said. Where have enforced disappearances happened before? Related: AOC's Viral Response About A Potential Presidential Run Has Everyone Watching, And I'm Honestly Living For It Lopez pointed to a few examples: In Argentina, during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared. In nearby Chile, more than 1,000 people went missing under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, while in Guatemala, some 45,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. In North Korea, instances of enforced disappearances and abductions date back to 1950. 'There are more recent instances of enforced disappearance, too,' he said. 'In Syria, for example, it's estimated that 136,000 people were disappeared under the Assad dictatorship.' But enforced disappearances aren't always carried out directly by state agents. said Adam Isacson, who leads border and migration work at the Washington Office on Latin America. Hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared each by irregular groups in Colombia and Mexico, operating with the tacit permission or even assistance of government officials. 'Sometimes, as with the anti-communist paramilitaries in Colombia and death squads in 1980s El Salvador, the officials colluded with the groups out of some ideological alliance,' he said. 'Sometimes, as with corrupt Mexican cops who assist organized crime, they do it because they profit from it.' Could what's happening in the U.S. now with immigrants be considered 'enforced disappearances'? In spite of existing court orders and legal challenges, the Trump administration continues its deportation policy in El Salvador, in partnership with the county's President Nayib Bukele. Venezuelan migrants have been targeted in particular for deportation, many on unproven allegations of gang affiliation. That said, Trump has also repeatedly said he's 'all for' looking for ways to detain U.S. citizens in foreign jails. Should we be calling what's happening now 'forced disappearances'? A report released by the UN in April suggests yes. The incommunicado detentions appeared to involve 'enforced disappearances, contrary to international law,' the report said. 'Many detainees were unaware of their destination, their families were not informed of their detention or removal, and the U.S. and Salvadoran authorities have not published the names or legal status of the detainees,' the UN experts wrote. 'Those imprisoned in El Salvador have been denied the right to communicate with and be visited by their family members.' Isacson agrees that we should be calling a spade a spade here. 'The only difference between that and what was done in 1970s Chile or Argentina is that loved ones have more reason to believe that their relatives are still alive and haven't been killed,' he said. But even that certainty is not complete, he said: 'Can you say with 100% confidence that Andry Hernandez ― the gay Venezuelan stylist that disappeared two months ago ― is still alive right now? He probably is, but you absolutely cannot guarantee that, and no one will confirm it.' The raids and deportations have certainly struck fear into American communities ― another classic characteristic of enforced disappearances. The Trump administration has openly said that its goal is to try to make life so difficult for immigrants that they 'self-deport.' Fear of being sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, where inmates never see the light of day, plays into that goal, said Rod Abouharb, an associate professor of international relations who researches forced disappearances at the University College London. 'These raids send out a chilling effect on those individuals who may be undocumented and even those who are legally in the United States: that they may be caught up in one of these raids, disappear into the prison system, and deported to a third country they may have no connection with,' he told HuffPost. What can regular citizens do in response to enforced disappearances? The best thing Americans can do to object to efforts like this is to draw as much attention as possible to individual cases, Lopez said. 'Whether that's by holding protests, creating online petitions or posting on social media, ensuring that a person who the government has tried to disappear remains visible and in the public discourse can be a powerful way to draw national attention to their plight and the plight of others like them.' he said. Isacson thinks it's important to encourage senate and congressional Democrats who've stood up and made headlines, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.). Back in April, Van Hollen pushed for a face-to-face meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia ― a Salvadoran native living in Maryland who was deported in March to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution. 'Democrats will actually help themselves politically if they keep making a lot of righteous noise about this,' he said. Americans should write to Republican moderates who seem quietly uncomfortable about forced disappearances and might be persuaded to action, Isacson said. 'All of us to stay vocal about this,' he said. 'Keep protesting, keep writing about it and keep calling your legislators.'This article originally appeared on HuffPost. Also in In the News: People Can't Believe This "Disgusting" Donald Trump Jr. Post About Joe Biden's Cancer Diagnosis Is Real Also in In the News: Republicans Are Calling Tim Walz "Tampon Tim," And The Backlash From Women Is Too Good Not To Share Also in In the News: JD Vance Shared The Most Bizarre Tweet Of Him Serving "Food" As Donald Trump's Housewife
Buzz Feed
3 days ago
- Politics
- Buzz Feed
Trump Era Disappearances: What You Need To Know
Last month, Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was scheduled for a routine hearing in immigration court. But as Mother Jones reports, he never made it because he'd been whisked off without due process to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) along with 230 Venezuelan immigrants. Since President Donald Trump began to carry out what he claimed would be the 'largest deportation' campaign in U.S. history earlier this year, there have been a number of cases where immigrants like Cornejo Pulgar have just 'disappeared.' In January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man working a delivery job and picking up food at a McDonald's in Detroit, Michigan, was deported and 'disappeared' to El Salvador after taking a wrong turn into Canada. 'Ricardo's story by itself is incredibly tragic — and we don't know how many Ricardos there are,' Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center who tried to locate Prada Vásquez, told The New York Times. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ultimately confirmed to him that he had been deported but did not divulge his destination. After the abductions, families of men like Prada Vásquez search, but the names of their loved ones disappear from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's online detainee locator. Could what's happening to immigrants under Trump be classified as 'enforced disappearances'? We spoke with academics and researchers who study how rogue states 'disappear' people. According to the United Nations, an 'enforced disappearance' occurs when agents of the state (or groups acting with its authorization and support) arrest, detain, abduct or in any other way deprive a person of their liberty. The state then refuses to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person concerned. If you're wondering whether this is legal or illegal, it's actually neither. 'The inherent consequence of an enforced disappearance is that the person is placed outside the protection of the law, in a sort of legal limbo,' said Gabriella Citroni, an adjunct professor of international human rights law at the university of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy, and a chair-rapporteur of UN expert group on enforced or involuntary disappearances. Unlike other crimes under international law, such as torture, enforced disappearances were not prohibited by a universal legally binding instrument before a UN Convention came into effect in 2010. Disappeared people frequently include political opponents, protesters, human rights defenders and community leaders, students and members of minorities, Citroni said. 'Typically, enforced disappearances are used to suppress freedom of expression or religion, or legitimate civil strife demanding democracy, as well as against persons involved in the defense of the land, natural resources, and the environment, and to fight organized crime or counter terrorism,' she said. Enforced disappearance functions as a tool of terror in two ways, said Oscar Lopez, a journalist based in Mexico City working on a book about the origins of forced disappearance during Mexico's 'Dirty War.' 'First, the victim is deprived of due process and often subjected to torture as well as the psychological hell of not knowing what's going to happen to them and possibly fearing for their life,' he told HuffPost. Secondly, enforced disappearance forces families and communities into a state of painful uncertainty, Lopez said. 'They don't know whether their relative is alive or dead and toggle between desperate hope and unbearable despair.' When disappearances occur frequently enough, they can leave entire communities in a state of terror, unsure of who might be taken next, Lopez said. What happens to people involuntarily disappeared depends 'very much on the context' in which they are taken, Lopez said. But generally speaking, if the person is kept alive, they're held in state custody for an indeterminate amount of time without the ability to communicate with their family or legal counsel ― aka they're 'held incommunicado.' If the person is killed, their bodies are often disposed of in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for them to be found. 'This can mean burying them in unmarked graves, cremating their remains, or, as happened in Latin America, throwing their corpses out to sea,' he said. Lopez pointed to a few examples: In Argentina, during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared. In nearby Chile, more than 1,000 people went missing under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, while in Guatemala, some 45,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. In North Korea, instances of enforced disappearances and abductions date back to 1950. 'There are more recent instances of enforced disappearance, too,' he said. 'In Syria, for example, it's estimated that 136,000 people were disappeared under the Assad dictatorship.' But enforced disappearances aren't always carried out directly by state agents. said Adam Isacson, who leads border and migration work at the Washington Office on Latin America. Hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared each by irregular groups in Colombia and Mexico, operating with the tacit permission or even assistance of government officials. 'Sometimes, as with the anti-communist paramilitaries in Colombia and death squads in 1980s El Salvador, the officials colluded with the groups out of some ideological alliance,' he said. 'Sometimes, as with corrupt Mexican cops who assist organized crime, they do it because they profit from it.' In spite of existing court orders and legal challenges, the Trump administration continues its deportation policy in El Salvador, in partnership with the county's President Nayib Bukele. Venezuelan migrants have been targeted in particular for deportation, many on unproven allegations of gang affiliation. That said, Trump has also repeatedly said he's 'all for' looking for ways to detain U.S. citizens in foreign jails. Should we be calling what's happening now 'forced disappearances'? A report released by the UN in April suggests yes. The incommunicado detentions appeared to involve 'enforced disappearances, contrary to international law,' the report said. 'Many detainees were unaware of their destination, their families were not informed of their detention or removal, and the U.S. and Salvadoran authorities have not published the names or legal status of the detainees,' the UN experts wrote. 'Those imprisoned in El Salvador have been denied the right to communicate with and be visited by their family members.' Isacson agrees that we should be calling a spade a spade here. 'The only difference between that and what was done in 1970s Chile or Argentina is that loved ones have more reason to believe that their relatives are still alive and haven't been killed,' he said. But even that certainty is not complete, he said: 'Can you say with 100% confidence that Andry Hernandez ― the gay Venezuelan stylist that disappeared two months ago ― is still alive right now? He probably is, but you absolutely cannot guarantee that, and no one will confirm it. ' The raids and deportations have certainly struck fear into American communities ― another classic characteristic of enforced disappearances. The Trump administration has openly said that its goal is to try to make life so difficult for immigrants that they 'self-deport.' Fear of being sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, where inmates never see the light of day, plays into that goal, said Rod Abouharb, an associate professor of international relations who researches forced disappearances at the University College London. 'These raids send out a chilling effect on those individuals who may be undocumented and even those who are legally in the United States: that they may be caught up in one of these raids, disappear into the prison system, and deported to a third country they may have no connection with,' he told HuffPost. What can regular citizens do in response to enforced disappearances? Pacific Press / Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images The best thing Americans can do to object to efforts like this is to draw as much attention as possible to individual cases, Lopez said. 'Whether that's by holding protests, creating online petitions or posting on social media, ensuring that a person who the government has tried to disappear remains visible and in the public discourse can be a powerful way to draw national attention to their plight and the plight of others like them.' he said. Isacson thinks it's important to encourage senate and congressional Democrats who've stood up and made headlines, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.). Back in April, Van Hollen pushed for a face-to-face meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia ― a Salvadoran native living in Maryland who was deported in March to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution. 'Democrats will actually help themselves politically if they keep making a lot of righteous noise about this,' he said. Americans should write to Republican moderates who seem quietly uncomfortable about forced disappearances and might be persuaded to action, Isacson said. 'All of us to stay vocal about this,' he said. 'Keep protesting, keep writing about it and keep calling your legislators.' HuffPost.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
People Are 'Disappearing' Since Trump Took Office. Here's What That Means.
Last month, Frizgeralth de Jesús Cornejo Pulgar, an asylum-seeker from Venezuela, was scheduled for a routine hearing in immigration court. But as Mother Jones reports, he never made it because he'd been whisked off without due process to El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) along with 230 Venezuelan immigrants. Since President Donald Trump began to carry out what he claimed would be the 'largest deportation' campaign in U.S. history earlier this year, there have been a number of cases where immigrants like Cornejo Pulgar have just 'disappeared.' In January, Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a Venezuelan man working a delivery job and picking up food at a McDonald's in Detroit, Michigan, was deported and 'disappeared' to El Salvador after taking a wrong turn into Canada. 'Ricardo's story by itself is incredibly tragic — and we don't know how many Ricardos there are,' Ben Levey, a staff attorney with the National Immigrant Justice Center who tried to locate Prada Vásquez, told The New York Times. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials ultimately confirmed to him that he had been deported but did not divulge his destination. After the abductions, families of men like Prada Vásquez search but the names of their loved ones disappear from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's online detainee locator. Could what's happening to immigrants under Trump be classified as 'enforced disappearances'? We spoke with academics and researchers who study how rogue states 'disappear' people. According to the United Nations, an 'enforced disappearance' occurs when agents of the state (or groups acting with its authorization and support) arrest, detain, abduct or in any other way deprive a person of their liberty. The state then refuses to disclose the fate or whereabouts of the person concerned. If you're wondering whether this is legal or illegal, it's actually neither. 'The inherent consequence of an enforced disappearance is that the person is placed outside the protection of the law, in a sort of legal limbo,' said Gabriella Citroni, an adjunct professor of international human rights law at the university of Milano-Bicocca in Milan, Italy, and a chair-rapporteur of UN expert group on enforced or involuntary disappearances. Unlike other crimes under international law, such as torture, enforced disappearances were not prohibited by a universal legally binding instrument before a UN Convention came into effect in 2010. Disappeared people frequently include political opponents, protesters, human rights defenders and community leaders, students and members of minorities, Citroni said. 'Typically, enforced disappearances are used to suppress freedom of expression or religion, or legitimate civil strife demanding democracy, as well as against persons involved in the defense of the land, natural resources and the environment and to fight organized crime or counter terrorism,' she said. Enforced disappearance functions as a tool of terror in two ways, said Oscar Lopez, a journalist based in Mexico City working on a book about the origins of forced disappearance during Mexico's 'Dirty War.' 'First, the victim is deprived of due process and often subjected to torture as well as the psychological hell of not knowing what's going to happen to them and possibly fearing for their life,' he told HuffPost. Secondly, enforced disappearance forces families and communities into a state of painful uncertainty, Lopez said. 'They don't know whether their relative is alive or dead and toggle between desperate hope and unbearable despair.' When disappearances occur frequently enough, they can leave entire communities in a state of terror, unsure of who might be taken next, Lopez said. What happens to people involuntarily disappeared depends 'very much on the context' in which they are taken, Lopez said. But generally speaking, if the person is kept alive, they're held in state custody for an indeterminate amount of time without the ability to communicate with their family or legal counsel ― aka they're 'held incommunicado.' If the person is killed, their bodies are often disposed of in such a way that it becomes almost impossible for them to be found. 'This can mean burying them in unmarked graves, cremating their remains, or, as happened in Latin America, throwing their corpses out to sea,' he said. Lopez pointed to a few examples: In Argentina, during the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983, an estimated 30,000 people were disappeared. In nearby Chile, more than 1,000 people went missing under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, while in Guatemala, some 45,000 people were forcibly disappeared during the country's civil war, which lasted from 1960 to 1996. In North Korea, instances of enforced disappearances and abductions date back to 1950. 'There are more recent instances of enforced disappearance, too,' he said. 'In Syria, for example, it's estimated that 136,000 people were disappeared under the Assad dictatorship.' But enforced disappearances aren't always carried out directly by state agents. said Adam Isacson, who leads border and migration work at the Washington Office on Latin America. Hundreds of thousands of people have been disappeared each by irregular groups in Colombia and Mexico, operating with the tacit permission or even assistance of government officials. 'Sometimes, as with the anti-communist paramilitaries in Colombia and death squads in 1980s El Salvador, the officials colluded with the groups out of some ideological alliance,' he said. 'Sometimes, as with corrupt Mexican cops who assist organized crime, they do it because they profit from it.' In spite of existing court orders and legal challenges, the Trump administration continues its deportation policy in El Salvador, in partnership with the county's President Nayib Bukele. Venezuelan migrants have been targeted in particular for deportation, many on unproven allegations of gang affiliation. That said, Trump has also repeatedly said he's 'all for' looking for ways to detain U.S. citizens in foreign jails. Should we be calling what's happening now 'forced disappearances'? A report released by the UN in April suggests yes. The incommunicado detentions appeared to involve 'enforced disappearances, contrary to international law,' the report said. 'Many detainees were unaware of their destination, their families were not informed of their detention or removal, and the U.S. and Salvadoran authorities have not published the names or legal status of the detainees,' the UN experts wrote. 'Those imprisoned in El Salvador have been denied the right to communicate with and be visited by their family members.' Isacson agrees that we should be calling a spade a spade here. 'The only difference between that and what was done in 1970s Chile or Argentina is that loved ones have more reason to believe that their relatives are still alive and haven't been killed,' he said. But even that certainty is not complete, he said: 'Can you say with 100% confidence that Andry Hernandez ― the gay Venezuelan stylist that disappeared two months ago ― is still alive right now? He probably is, but you absolutely cannot guarantee that, and no one will confirm it.' The raids and deportations have certainly struck fear into American communities ― another classic characteristic of enforced disappearances. The Trump administration has openly said that its goal is to try to make life so difficult for immigrants that they 'self-deport.' Fear of being sent to a notorious El Salvador prison, where inmates never see the light of day, plays into that goal, said Rod Abouharb, an associate professor of international relations who researches forced disappearances at the University College London. 'These raids send out a chilling effect on those individuals who may be undocumented and even those who are legally in the United States: that they may be caught up in one of these raids, disappear into the prison system, and deported to a third country they may have no connection with,' he told HuffPost. The best thing Americans can do to object to efforts like this is to draw as much attention as possible to individual cases, Lopez said. 'Whether that's by holding protests, creating online petitions or posting on social media, ensuring that a person who the government has tried to disappear remains visible and in the public discourse can be a powerful way to draw national attention to their plight and the plight of others like them.' he said. Isacson thinks it's important to encourage senate and congressional Democrats who've stood up and made headlines, like Sen. Chris Van Hollen (Md.). Back in April, Van Hollen pushed for a face-to-face meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia ― a Salvadoran native living in Maryland who was deported in March to El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution. 'Democrats will actually help themselves politically if they keep making a lot of righteous noise about this,' he said. Americans should write to Republican moderates who seem quietly uncomfortable about forced disappearances and might be persuaded to action, Isacson said. 'All of us to stay vocal about this,' he said. 'Keep protesting, keep writing about it and keep calling your legislators.' The Insidious Message Behind Kristi Noem's 'ICE Barbie' Cosplay Teen Remains In ICE Detention Despite Police Admitting To Pulling Her Over By Mistake Fed Up With ICE Crackdowns? Here's How To Actually Make A Difference For Immigrants.
Yahoo
06-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump cuts off most help for immigrants with mental illness or cognitive disabilities
The Trump administration has pulled the plug on a program that provides legal help to immigrants who are determined mentally incompetent, according to a lawsuit filed by immigration legal groups. The groups, which filed the lawsuit in District of Columbia federal district court late Monday, said about 200 people were getting services through the terminated program known as the National Qualified Representative Program. Attorneys said the end of the representation leaves some of the most vulnerable immigrants — those with mental health issues, cognitive disabilities, traumatic brain injuries — in danger. The program ended in every state except for Arizona, California and Washington, where it was originally established as part of a legal settlement. 'People who suffer from mental illness in a lot of countries around the world are at grave risk of torture and death,' and without counsel, deportation could subject them to those conditions, David Faherty, supervising attorney for adult detention with the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told NBC News. NBC News has reached out to the White House and Justice Department for comment. The Department of Homeland Security deferred to the Justice Department on comment. The program is the latest target of the Trump administration as it seeks to accelerate deportations and dismantle legal programs that support immigrants. The administration also has been trying to choke off money that pays for immigration attorneys who assist unaccompanied immigrant children. It ended orientation programs for detainees that informed them of their rights, and it plans to replace lawyers representing children and parents or guardians separated at the border under the previous Trump administration with the administration's own lawyers. In a March memo, President Donald Trump took issue with immigration lawyers, and directed the attorney general to take action against them in certain circumstances. The April 25 termination of a contract with Acacia Center for Justice, the contractor that subcontracts with several of the legal groups that sued, had immediate impact, Faherty said. Faherty had informed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and an immigration court that a man held in ICE custody had mental illness, which he learned from a call by a family member to the National Immigrant Justice Center's hotline. An immigrant judge determined that the immigrant was not competent and needed a lawyer. That same day, the Trump administration pulled the plug on the program that would have provided one. Faherty said usually once an attorney is mandated, the National Immigrant Justice Center would hear from the court to provide legal counsel. But it has not been contacted. Along with assistance going through the process, the legal groups help set up forensic, medical and psychological evaluations; ensure there is access to treatment; or sometimes help immigrants get in touch with a lost family member, attorneys said. The immigrants' circumstances run the gamut, with some who are homeless, others whose mental illness has only begun to emerge, some who suffered traumatic brain injuries, and elder immigrants experiencing dementia. There are also those who have been diagnosed with mental illness and were undergoing treatment before ending up in ICE custody. The program is popular with immigration judges because it makes their job easier, since they can leave the work of getting evaluations to attorneys, Faherty said. 'Having counsel in this situation, it's more efficient. It moves much more smoothly through the immigration process than if you don't have counsel,' he said. The program the administration ended stems from a 2013 lawsuit in which the main plaintiff, José Antonio Franco-Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant with a cognitive disability, was detained for almost five years without a hearing or a lawyer. The settlement of the 2010 suit applied only to immigrants in the states of Arizona, California and Washington. But the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration adopted a policy to extend the 'enhanced' protections for immigrants to those in all other states. 'The government's action in cutting funding for court-appointed counsel for people not competent to represent themselves in immigration court is not just heartless and cruel, but also discriminatory against people with disabilities,' Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, another plaintiff, stated in a news release. Veronica Barba, a California attorney who handles cases covered by the terminated program, said the difference since the settlement is like night and day. 'People were languishing in the courts and detention centers for years and years,' Barba said. 'The way I look at it, it could be any one of us who falls ill one day.' The lawsuit's plaintiffs include American Gateways, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Estrella del Paso, Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, National Immigrant Justice Center, Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center, and Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network. This article was originally published on
NBC News
06-05-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Trump cuts off most help for immigrants with mental illness or cognitive disabilities
The Trump administration has pulled the plug on a program that provides legal help to immigrants who are determined mentally incompetent, according to a lawsuit filed by immigration legal groups. The groups, which filed the lawsuit in District of Columbia federal district court late Monday, said about 200 people were getting services through the terminated program known as the National Qualified Representative Program. Attorneys said the end of the representation leaves some of the most vulnerable immigrants — those with mental health issues, cognitive disabilities, traumatic brain injuries — in danger. The program ended in every state except for Arizona, California and Washington, where it was originally established as part of a legal settlement. 'People who suffer from mental illness in a lot of countries around the world are at grave risk of torture and death,' and without counsel, deportation could subject them to those conditions, David Faherty, supervising attorney for adult detention with the National Immigrant Justice Center, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, told NBC News. NBC News has reached out to the White House and Justice Department for comment. The Department of Homeland Security deferred to the Justice Department on comment. The program is the latest target of the Trump administration as it seeks to accelerate deportations and dismantle legal programs that support immigrants. The administration also has been trying to choke off money that pays for immigration attorneys who assist unaccompanied immigrant children. It ended orientation programs for detainees that informed them of their rights, and it plans to replace lawyers representing children and parents or guardians separated at the border under the previous Trump administration with the administration's own lawyers. In a March memo, President Donald Trump took issue with immigration lawyers, and directed the attorney general to take action against them in certain circumstances. The April 25 termination of a contract with Acacia Center for Justice, the contractor that subcontracts with several of the legal groups that sued, had immediate impact, Faherty said. Faherty had informed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and an immigration court that a man held in ICE custody had mental illness, which he learned from a call by a family member to the National Immigrant Justice Center's hotline. An immigrant judge determined that the immigrant was not competent and needed a lawyer. That same day, the Trump administration pulled the plug on the program that would have provided one. Faherty said usually once an attorney is mandated, the National Immigrant Justice Center would hear from the court to provide legal counsel. But it has not been contacted. Along with assistance going through the process, the legal groups help set up forensic, medical and psychological evaluations; ensure there is access to treatment; or sometimes help immigrants get in touch with a lost family member, attorneys said. The immigrants' circumstances run the gamut, with some who are homeless, others whose mental illness has only begun to emerge, some who suffered traumatic brain injuries, and elder immigrants experiencing dementia. There are also those who have been diagnosed with mental illness and were undergoing treatment before ending up in ICE custody. The program is popular with immigration judges because it makes their job easier, since they can leave the work of getting evaluations to attorneys, Faherty said. 'Having counsel in this situation, it's more efficient. It moves much more smoothly through the immigration process than if you don't have counsel,' he said. The program the administration ended stems from a 2013 lawsuit in which the main plaintiff, José Antonio Franco-Gonzalez, a Mexican immigrant with a cognitive disability, was detained for almost five years without a hearing or a lawyer. The settlement of the 2010 suit applied only to immigrants in the states of Arizona, California and Washington. But the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security under the Obama administration adopted a policy to extend the 'enhanced' protections for immigrants to those in all other states. 'The government's action in cutting funding for court-appointed counsel for people not competent to represent themselves in immigration court is not just heartless and cruel, but also discriminatory against people with disabilities,' Laura Lunn, director of advocacy and litigation at the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, another plaintiff, stated in a news release. Veronica Barba, a California attorney who handles cases covered by the terminated program, said the difference since the settlement is like night and day. 'People were languishing in the courts and detention centers for years and years,' Barba said. 'The way I look at it, it could be any one of us who falls ill one day.' The lawsuit's plaintiffs include American Gateways, Amica Center for Immigrant Rights, Estrella del Paso, Galveston-Houston Immigrant Representation Project, Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota, Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, National Immigrant Justice Center, Pennsylvania Immigration Resource Center, and Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network.
