Accés a serveis lingüístics per als sol·licitants d'asil en els centres de detenció de les zones frontereres de Texas
| Autor | Melissa Wallace - Carlos Iván Hernández |
| Cargo | University of Texas (San Antonio, EUA) - St. Mary's University School of Law (San Antonio, EUA) |
| Páginas | 143-156 |
LANGUAGE ACCESS FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS IN BORDERLAND DETENTION
CENTERS IN TEXAS
Melissa Wallace*
Carlos Iván Hernández**
Abstract
Extreme gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has prompted thousands of mothers and children to
seek refuge in the United States. In response to the 2014 migrant crisis, the United States’ use of family detention centers
represents one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration’s political response. For-prot detention
centers located in Karnes, Texas and Dilley, Texas, are currently housing thousands of asylum-seeking mothers and
children beyond capacity (García-Ditta 2015: n.p.). The gravity of the current refugee crisis is only exacerbated by
language barriers – one of the direst obstacles to avoiding swift removal processes. A crucial step in the asylum-seeking
process is the credible fear interview (CFI), an immigration proceeding in which a person must demonstrate credible
fear of returning to his or her home country or be subject to deportation. This article directly locates language mediation
in non-criminal immigration proceedings as a human right to which institutional compliance is still unresponsive and
ineffectual. The authors aim to offer a descriptive analysis of US immigration proceedings with a brief nal discussion
which contemplates the unexplored aspects of the legal and ethical grey zone of language access in borderland detention
centers.
Keywords: interpreting in asylum proceedings; detention centers; credible fear interview; language access in immigration
hearings.
ACCÉS A SERVEIS LINGÜÍSTICS PER ALS SOL·LICITANTS D’ASIL EN ELS CENTRES
DE DETENCIÓ DE LES ZONES FRONTERERES DE TEXAS
Resum
La violència extrema de les bandes criminals d’El Salvador, Guatemala i Hondures ha provocat que milers de mares i
nens busquin refugi als Estats Units. Com a resposta a la crisi migratòria del 2014, l’ús que els Estats Units ha fet dels
centres de detenció per a famílies representa un dels aspectes més controvertits de la resposta política que va donar
l’Administració Obama. Actualment, els centres de detenció privats que es troben a Karnes i Dilley (Texas) allotgen,
per sobre de la seva capacitat, milers de mares i nens sol·licitants d’asil (García-Ditta 2015: s. p.). La gravetat de
la crisi de refugiats actual es veu agreujada, a més, per la barreres lingüístiques: un dels pitjors obstacles per evitar
processos de trasllat immediat. Un pas molt important en el procediment de sol·licitud d’asil és l’entrevista per deter-
minar si hi ha un temor creïble (credible fear interview, CFI), un tràmit en l’àmbit de la immigració en què la persona
ha de demostrar, de forma creïble, que té por de tornar al seu país d’origen o de ser deportat. Aquest article considera
de forma directa la mediació lingüística dins els procediments d’immigració no penals com un dret humà la garantia
del qual, per part de les institucions, encara no s’ha fet efectiva. Els autors busquen oferir una anàlisi descriptiva dels
procediments d’immigració dels Estats Units que acaba amb una breu reexió sobre els aspectes pendents d’explorar
de la zona grisa jurídica i ètica de l’accés als serveis lingüístics en els centres de detenció de les zones frontereres.
Paraules clau: la interpretació en els tràmits d’asil; centres de detenció; entrevistes per determinar si hi ha temor
creïble; l’accés als serveis lingüístics en les audiències d’immigrants.
* Melissa Wallace. University of Texas (San Antonio, EUA).
** Carlos Iván Hernández. St. Mary’s University School of Law (San Antonio, EUA).
Recommended citation: Wallace, Melissa; Hernández, Carlos Iván. «Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention
centers in Texas». Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, issue. 68, 2017, p. 143-156. DOI: 10.2436/rld.
i68.2017.2940.
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 144
Summary
1 Introduction and overview
2 Asylum proceedings in the United States
3 Language access and the Credible Fear Interview (CFI)
4 Discussion and conclusions
5 References
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 145
1 Introduction and overview
Extreme gang violence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras has prompted thousands of mothers and
children to seek refuge in the United States. In response to the migrant crisis of 2014, the United States’ use
of family detention centers represents one of the most controversial aspects of the Obama administration’s
political response. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement-run detention centers located in Karnes,
Texas and Dilley, Texas, are currently housing thousands of asylum-seeking mothers and children beyond
capacity (García-Ditta 2015: n.p.). The gravity of the current refugee crisis is only exacerbated by language
barriers – barriers which represent one of the direst obstacles to avoiding swift removal processes. A crucial
step in the asylum-seeking process is the credible fear interview (CFI), an immigration proceeding in which
a person must demonstrate credible fear of returning to his or her home country or be subject to deportation.
In order for asylum seekers to be able to adequately present their petitions in credible fear interviews, they
must have the opportunity to seek legal counsel and receive preparation in a language they can understand.
The detainees in Karnes and Dilley, two major borderland detention centers, are women and children who
have been apprehended after crossing the border to the United States. Immediately upon being captured along
the Texas-Mexico border, migrant men, women, and children are detained in short-term facilities referred to
as hieleras, or iceboxes, for days at a time, and forced to sleep on cold, concrete oors in overcrowded cells
(García-Ditta 2015: n.p.). Subsequently they are housed in detention centers for up to a year as they await
their rst interview with asylum ofcers in order to nd out whether or not they have met the requirements
to formally seek asylum or whether they will be automatically deported.1 The great majority of people comes
from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, with these three countries accounting for a full 85 percent of
immigrants from Central America (Zong & Batalova 2015: n.p.).
Karnes and Dilley exclusively house women and girls, a population of Central American migrants who have
often left their home countries due to sexual assault, rape, and gender-related intimidation and violence,
often at the hands of gangs and organized crime. As the number of Central American women and girls
crossing into the United States continues to spike, so is the staggering amount of sexual violence waged
against these migrants who are in search of a better life. According to a Fusion investigation, 80 percent of
women and girls crossing into the United States by way of Mexico are raped during their journey (America
with Jorge Ramos, producer, 2016), a statistic which surpasses a previous estimate of 60 percent, according
to an Amnesty International report (Amnesty International 2010: 15).
Even more tragically, tens of thousands of child migrants cross the border completely alone. The two
signicant surges of unaccompanied minors entering the United States during and around 2014 were directly
responsible for the re-implementation of the use of for-prot detention centers to house and process a
staggering number of undocumented children. From the start of scal year 2014 through July 31, 2015,
72,968, or 74 percent, of the unaccompanied minors apprehended by US Customs and Border Protection
(CBP) at the US-Mexico border were from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras (Zong & Batalova, 2015:
n.p.). During the same year, the number of Central American girls caught at the US - Mexico2 border rapidly
outpaced the number of boys, according to a July Pew Research study (Jordan 2014: n.p.). More recently, as
of 2016, the number of unaccompanied girls under 18 is up 77 percent this year alone (America with Jorge
Ramos, producer, 2016), marking a trend in the feminization of child migrants across the US-Mexico border.
Female genderedness and gender non-conformance constitute factors which put detainees at considerable
high risk both while crossing the border and within the connes of detention centers, constituting an under-
researched area of inquiry related to the vulnerable populations housed in the border’s private prisons.3
1 Male detainees are sent to the South Texas Detention Center, a privately-owned prison located in Pearsall, Texas.
2 Of the children who were apprehended, more than three quarters were caught crossing the Rio Grande Valley in Texas (Park 2015: n.p.).
3 Gender non-conforming detainees represent another highly vulnerable population as it is the policy of the United States to place
detainees in detention with inmates of the sex they were assigned at birth. This policy was carried out even in the high prole case of
US Army soldier Chelsea Manning, a transgender woman who was sentenced to 35 years in military prison for leaking secret military
and diplomatic les to the website WikiLeaks. Manning was housed in a men’s prison for seven years before President Obama
commuted her sentence (Pilkington, Smith, & Gambino, 2017: n.p.). The Transgender Law Center reports that “LGBTQ immigrants
are often placed in detention facilities that misgender them, allow/foster physical and sexual abuse, and ignore verbal and physical
harassment from both other detainees and detention guards” (Transgender Law Center, n.d.).
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 146
While this article aims to shed particular light on language access obstacles, the fact that persecution based
on sexual orientation and gender identity is a global phenomenon must be duly noted (Heitz 2013: 214).
In borderland detention facilities, the language access difculties of the women and girls are compounded
when they are also native speakers of indigenous languages. While language barriers pose a signicant
problem of access to the US immigration system for nearly all migrants, this barrier becomes more acute and
difcult to surmount in the case of speakers of minority languages from several areas of Central America.
In an unpublished study carried out by two graduate student researchers in Peace and Justice Studies at the
University of San Diego, the authors reveal that the Department of Homeland Security “does not provide
any training to its personnel to be able to identify indigenous languages, … [and has] no standard assessment
tools or consistent access to interpretation if that language is identied” (Azevedo & Cychosz: 2016: 2). As
a result, speakers of indigenous languages are sometimes perceived to have been informed about their legal
rights when they were not, and some face longer detention times if agents realize that a migrant speaks little
or no Spanish or English (Azevedo & Cychosz 2016: 3-4). Furthermore, they may labor under the additional
fear that information shared with an interpreter of their languages, spoken by exceedingly few people, will
nd its way back to their home communities.
In a memorandum from the US Department of Homeland Security to Asylum Ofce Directors, it was
acknowledged that neither of the two language service providers with whom Asylum Headquarters contracts
has interpreters available for the Guatemalan language Ixil, and that interpreters of other languages such
as Mam are very limited, meaning that “scheduling their use can lead to lengthy delays in the process of
the credible fear case” (Kim 2013: 1). Similarly, in a complaint submitted to the Department of Homeland
Security Ofce of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and the Ofce of the Inspector General by the CARA
Family Detention Pro Bono Project, indigenous peoples are identied as Central America’s most vulnerable,
impoverished, and illiterate citizens (CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project 2015: 2), with indigenous
women identied as being even less likely to be procient in Spanish than indigenous men. CARA Project
staff report that Customs and Border Protection agents routinely misidentify indigenous women’s primary
language as Spanish and incorrectly report that indigenous women understood interrogations conducted in
Spanish (CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project 2015: 3) when, in fact, they did not. These communication
barriers have resulted in women and children of indigenous languages living in virtual solitary connement,
sometimes even resulting in the erroneous deportation of families seeking protection in the United States.
Moreover, in a scathing indictment of the points of language exclusion contact for indigenous language-
speaking individuals in the US immigration system, the technical review “Exclusion of Indigenous Language
Speaking Immigrants (ILSI) in the US Immigration System” states that
Limited English Prociency [(LEP)] programs in CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] and ICE [Immigration
and Customs Enforcement] have been identied as having inadequate standards, non-mandated, and non-
compensated language training for staff. LEP programs lack any viable process for language assessment of
indigenous language speaking immigrants. They have not conceived of a language assessment process for
indigenous language speaking immigrants beyond instructing their front line staff to complete them. LEP
program practice suffers from policy that is “coordinated” but without evaluation and without monitoring
for effectiveness. The diffuse nature of agencies in the US immigration system as a whole perpetuate
discrimination against ILSIs [Indigenous Language Speaking Immigrants] in every operation that ILSIs
encounter (Gentry 2015: 11).
All things considered, detainees in borderland detention centers face serious challenges to their procedural
rights that are hindered by difculties related directly to language access issues. In response, this article
directly locates language mediation in non-criminal immigration proceedings as a human right to which
institutional compliance is still unresponsive and ineffectual. The authors of this article aim to offer a unique
perspective on issues of language access to vulnerable populations in US / Mexico borderland detention
facilities in the south of Texas. Having identied and described the detainee population in Karnes and Dilley
by means of a variety of secondary sources, the following section offers a descriptive analysis of asylum
and immigration proceedings in the United States followed by a detailed examination of the Critical Fear
Interview (CFI), a pivotal moment in the asylum-seeking process.
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 147
2 Asylum proceedings in the United States
Generally, to be able to get asylum in the United States, asylum seekers must prove that they are unable or
unwilling to return to their country of origin because of a well-founded fear of past or future persecution on
account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion [8 USC
§1101(a)(42)(A); 8 USC §1158 (b)(1)(A)]. Asylum seekers can le their applications either afrmatively
or defensively.4 Afrmative applications are generally led by applicants who are already in the United
States or individuals who submit their application through a US Embassy or Consulate, and these afrmative
applications are adjudicated by the United States Department of Customs and Immigration Services), or
by the Department of Customs and Immigration Services (US Department of Homeland Security 2013: 5).
On the other hand, defensive asylum applications are led by applicants subject to removal or deportation
proceedings because they have recently been apprehended by ofcers of the Department of Customs and
Border Protection (CBP) after entering or attempting to enter the United States without proper documentation5
or by applicants who have been referred to the Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
by state or local law enforcement agencies (Meissner, Kerwin, Chisthi & Bergeron 2013: 7). Defensive
asylum applications are ultimately adjudicated by the Executive Ofce for Immigration Review (EOIR)
(Brockway 2017: 197). This article focuses on defensive asylum processing and addresses some of the
obstacles that asylum seekers encounter during the asylum seeking process, with a particular emphasis on
language access barriers. Namely, the authors aim to provide some insight into the general process that
asylum seekers undergo as soon as they are apprehended by CBP, the particular due process problems that
they face as foreign nationals, and the type of language access that asylum seekers receive during one of the
most important steps of the asylum process, the credible fear interview (CFI).
The asylum process in the United States is notoriously complex and riddled with obstacles. Upon apprehension
by Customs and Border Protection (CBP), foreign nationals who wish to apply for asylum in the United States
are exposed to a series of humanitarian and legal hurdles that can pose additional hardships in the midst of
their already distressing journey to the United States. Almost immediately after their apprehension, asylum
seekers detained at the southern Texas border with Mexico are rushed to CBP holding facilities popularly
known as hieleras (iceboxes) (Cantor 2015: 5), where they are screened and vetted by CBP ofcials. These
primary holding are used for temporary short-term detention; however, it has been widely reported that in
some instances CBP has held immigrants for days (Cantor 2015: 1). Often times, during these preliminary
screenings, CBP ofcials take away most of the belongings that asylum seekers bring with them, including
some reported instances in which CBP ofcials have taken away individuals’ medications to treat their pre-
existing conditions (Rodríguez Alvarado and A.S.R. v. United States 2016: 12), leaving them with only the
clothes that they have on (Ford 2016: 66-67). The time that asylum seekers spend at these primary holding
facilities is a dire one. They are exposed to poor, unhygienic conditions and maltreatment from CBP ofcers
(Cantor 2015: 5). Individuals are often crammed together in holding cells that are not suitable for overnight
detention; mothers and children have no other option but to sleep on the oor; they are poorly fed; their
medical needs are not addressed; and they are not afforded even minimal privacy to use the restroom. Some
of them even experience humiliating, xenophobic remarks from some CBP ofcers (Ford 2016: 66-67).
Once asylum seekers are inspected at the primary holding facilities, they are then transported to a secondary
holding facility in which CBP ofcers conduct a series of pre-screening, quasi-judicial proceedings to
determine whether asylum seekers are subject to expedited removal pursuant to United States immigration
laws. It is fair to say that the conditions at these secondary holding facilities, popularly known as perreras
because of their similarity to dog pounds (Ford 2016: 68-69) do not signicantly improve in comparison to
those of the initial holding facilities (Photo exhibits in Doe v. Johnson 2016: n.p.).
It is precisely during the time that asylum seekers spend at these secondary holding facilities that the intricate
legal journey to obtain asylum in the United States begins. Under United States immigration law, individuals
that enter the United States without proper documentation [8 USC. §1182(a)(7)] are subject to expedited
4 Afrmative asylum applications are decided by an Asylum Ofcer in a non-adversarial system. Defensive asylum applications are
adjudicated by an Immigration Judge in an adversarial setting.
5 Unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors have two opportunities to have their asylum claims adjudicated. First, they can le an
afrmative asylum application with USCIS and, if denied, their application is automatically referred to the Executive Ofce for
Immigration Review (EOIR) where an immigration ofcer adjudicates their application de novo.
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 148
removal, also known as automatic deportation, without the opportunity of appellate or judicial review [8
USC. §1225(b)(1)(B)(iii)] unless they express an intention to apply for asylum or can establish a credible and
well-founded fear of persecution if returned to their country [8 USC. §1158(b)]. CBP ofcers rush asylum
seekers into small, crowded rooms where they conduct an interview known as the credible fear interview
(CFI) (King 2015: 11), a critical interview in which asylum seekers must convince Customs and Border
Protection ofcers that their claims of fear of persecution on account of any of the ve previously-mentioned
grounds (race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group,6 or political opinion) have merit
and can hold up in court during their merits hearing [(8 USC. §1225(b)(1)(B)(v)]. It is during the credible
fear interview that asylum seekers face signicant barriers that hinge on the accuracy and quality of the
language access services provided by Customs and Border Protection.
Asylum seekers that receive a positive determination on their critical fear interview are placed on “standard”
removal, or deportation, proceedings (8 USC. §1229a), which fall under the jurisdiction of the Department
of Justice, administered by the Executive Ofce for Immigration Review (Brockway 2017: 197). From
that point onward, the EOIR has the discretionary power to indenitely detain asylum seekers until an
immigration judge grants or denies their asylum claim [8 USC. §1226(a)] or sets a judicial bond provided
that the asylum seeker does not pose a ight risk or danger to society (Matter of Hussam Fatahi 2016: 793).
However, in practice, the high judicial bond amounts ordered by immigration judges, without regard to the
asylum seekers’ ability to pay (Human Rights First 2016: n.p.) result in unreasonably prolonged detention
that can last months, if not years (Domínguez, Lee, & Leiserson 2016: 33), particularly in cases involving
men and women who do not bring their children with them. As a matter of fact, the Supreme Court of the
United States is expected to rule on October 2, 20177 on the constitutionality of the prolonged, and sometimes
indenite, detention of asylum seekers (Totenberg 2016: n.p.).
Asylum seekers that remain detained under custody of ICE are place on “expedited” dockets,8 whereas non-
detained asylum seekers whose cases are assigned to Texas immigration tribunals face long waiting periods
averaging 752 days (TRACImmigration 2016: n.p.) before their nal merits hearing (Solis 2016: n.p.). This
is in part due to the high number of immigration cases that Texas immigration judges preside over on a yearly
basis. Texas has 9 immigration courts in which 43 immigration judges (US Department of Justice n.d.b: n.p.)
handle on average 1500 removal cases per year (Fidler 2016: 10). From the years 2011-2015, the latest years
for which data is available, EOIR received an average of 46,149 asylum applications (US Department of
Justice n.d.a: n.p.).
3 Language access and the Credible Fear Interview (CFI)
There are many reasons why the CFI interview conducted by asylum ofcers is the most important phase of
the asylum seeking process. Aside from the imminent and immediate risk of automatic deportation if asylum
seekers do not pass the interview, the conditions, timing, and manner in which the interviews are conducted
are inherently awed, increasing the risk of wrongful deportation (Domínguez et. al. 2016: 32). Given the
6 In fact, attorney Aimee Heitz makes a compelling case for re-interpreting “social group” to include gender as in addition to “widespread
forced marriages, rape, female genital mutilation, honor killings and forced abortions, among other types of gender-based persecution,
victims of extreme domestic violence have only recently begun to form the basis of allowed claims for asylum” (2013: 214).
7 The case at issue is Jennings v. Rodriguez, in which the joint plaintiffs seek relief on their prolonged detention after being detained
without a bond hearing for well over a year. The plaintiffs challenge the constitutionality of DHS’s decision to keep them detained
for a period exceeding six months without a bond hearing on the grounds that such a decision violates the constitutional prohibition
against cruel and unusual punishment by the government under the Eight Amendment of the Constitution. Although the petition for
habeas corpus was rst led in 2007, this case has a convoluted procedural history. In November 2016, in a four-to-four tie, the US
Supreme Court voted to uphold the lower appellate court’s decision in which the DHS prevailed. The 2016 Supreme Court ruling
was in large part a product of the polarized US political system because the senate Republicans refused to conrm President Obama’s
candidate to ll a vacancy on the highest court of the country. This case is set for re-argument before the Court in October 2017.
8 On January 31, 2017, the Justice Department rescinded a controversial policy established in 2014 by the Obama administration
which implemented a priority docket system in response to the ongoing surges of mostly Central American asylum seekers arriving
in the United States. These so-called “rocket dockets” authorized EOIR to prioritize the removal of recently-arrived unaccompanied
minors and families consisting of a least one adult and once child in an effort to deter future surges (US Department of Justice 2014:
n.p). This policy raised due process concerns by immigration advocates, who now applaud this unexpected policy rescission coming
from the Trump administration (Dickerson & Robbins 2017: n.p.).
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 149
importance of the CFI, there are particular concerns regarding the type of language interpretation provided
during these interviews and the poor judicial review available to those who do not pass the test.
To begin, scant attention has been paid to the language mediation services available to detainees before their
credible fear interviews, the importance of which cannot be underestimated. To lend context to this situation,
it must be made clear that detainees’ access to legal counsel is completely dependent upon volunteer, pro-
bono attorneys who temporarily relocate from all around the United States to volunteer their time in Karnes
or Dilley for short (usually week-long) periods of time. Since detainees are not, for the most part, facing
criminal charges, they have no right to a government-funded attorney, and can benet from the assistance of
a lawyer only if they can afford one or nd a volunteer (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, n.d.:
n.p.). Again, because the credible fear interview is not a part of a criminal proceeding, detainees likewise have
no right to an interpreter in the preparation phase leading up to the credible fear interview. It could be argued,
nonetheless, that a positive outcome of a credible fear interview hinges very directly on the intervention of
an attorney (assisted by an interpreter), as he or she can make it absolutely clear to the petitioner that her
personal narrative of credible fear must reect persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership
in a particular social group, or political opinion in order to be successful. The interpreters for the preparation
phase of the credible fear interview are, like the attorneys, volunteers: well-meaning community members,
student volunteers, and certied and uncertied court interpreters motivated by a call to civic engagement.
Although statistics are not available to substantiate this declaration, anecdotal evidence and the personal
experience of the authors suggest that most are partially or fully untrained and untested.
While no interpreters are provided by immigration services to prepare asylum seekers with their attorneys,
if they have them, ICE (US Citizen and Immigration Services) does have in place a system to authorize
asylum ofcers to conduct credible and reasonable fear interviews in a language other than English if the
asylum ofcer has scored at least a 3 out of 5 on the Foreign Service Institute language prociency test
(Lafferty 2013: n.p.). In other words, the asylum ofcer may conduct interviews in a non-English language
if he or she has shown a certain level of language prociency, but neither the ofcers’ interpreting skills
nor their knowledge of domain-specic terminology are ever evaluated. More habitually in Texas, where
many ofcial immigration proceedings require Spanish-language mediation, many of the Spanish-language
interpreters come from the state’s roster of certied9 court interpreters, who interpret in person or remotely.
For most other languages, immigration personnel contract with Lionbridge and Language Line, large
agencies that provide interpreters of non-publicly veriable qualications and experience. In the case of rare
languages, when an interpreter is not locatable through one of the agencies, the Asylum Ofce must still
schedule the applicant for an interview to determine if, in addition to the rare language, the individual is able
to communicate in another language. For example an applicant who speaks Ixil may be able to adequately
communicate in Spanish. An individual whose native language is Pakistani Pashtu may also speak Afghani
Pashtu, Punjabi or Urdu (Kim 2013: 2).
The CFI is administered by asylum ofcers in a quasi-judicial setting within days of apprehension (American
Immigration Lawyers Association, et al. 2015: 2). Asylum seekers are expected to communicate in a detailed,
consistent, and plausible fashion with their asylum ofcer in order to get a positive determination on their
CFI (King 2015: 11) even though interviews are often conducted in crowded places not suitable for sensitive,
distressing and condential testimony.10 The majority of asylum seekers that enter the United States through
Texas are Central American women, men, and children, either traveling as a family unit or individually, eeing
the ongoing gang violence crisis that persists in the Northern Triangle of Central America (Human Rights
First 2015: 1). These asylum seekers normally travel through many countries under inhumane conditions and
often arrive at US facilities sick and traumatized from their pre-migration experiences (Keller, Joscelyne,
Granski, & Rosenfeld 2017: 6) as well as their journey to the United States, rendering them incapable –and
in some cases even judicially incompetent– to provide a full and accurate account of their claims for seeking
asylum in the United States (American Immigration Lawyers Association et al. 2015: 2).
9 In Texas, interpreters who have passed oral certication exams are known as LCIs, or Licensed Court Interpreters.
10 The asylum ofcer will want to know the following: (1) Who harmed, persecuted or tortured the asylum seeker?; (2) Why was
she personally persecuted?; (3) Was the persecution motivated by her race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or membership in
a group?; (4) How was the government involved, or was there a lack of government involvement?; (5) Is there a chance of internal
relocation within her country to avoid being persecuted? (The Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project, 2013: n.p.).
Melissa Wallace; Carlos Iván Hernández
Language access for asylum seekers in borderland detention centers in Texas
Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 150
Given the high stakes involved at the credible fear interview and the fact that most of the asylum seekers
are LEP (of limited English prociency), a logical inference would be that the Department of Homeland
Security would provide – just like in federal criminal cases – free, certied interpreters to ensure that the
claims asserted by asylum seekers during the interviews are accurately conveyed to the asylum ofcer. In
reality, however, the language interpreting services provided are decient, inefcient and sometimes result
in wrongful deportations of asylum seekers either at the CFI stage or even during their nal merits hearing
–particularly in the case of people that get set free on a judicial bond (Garza 2017: n.p.).
Pursuant to an executive order signed by president Clinton (Executive Order 13166 2000: n.p.), the Department
of Homeland Security has set forth a number of mechanisms intended to assist LEP individuals with their
credible fear interview claims, including the ability to enter into agreements with third-party interpreting
agencies11 and distributing translated written materials in key languages addressing the CFI process (US
Department of Homeland Security 2012: 25). The effect of DHS’s decision to essentially outsource its
language access services to for-prot third-party interpreting agencies is that it shifts the potential liability
that could arise from ineffective language interpretation onto these agencies that may or may not have
policies in place to hire certied interpreters. In other words, this shift in liability effectively shields DHS
from potential lawsuits and diverts the responsibility of ensuring that the interpreters used during the CFI
have been certied or, at the very least, that they have received necessary and proper training to comply with
the very minimal federal requirements that currently exist.
The CFI is, arguably by legislative design, slanted against asylum seekers. CFIs are considered by the
government to be non-adversarial processes in which the asylum seeker bears the burden of proving that there
is a signicant possibility12 that the interviewee could establish eligibility for asylum under US immigration
law [8 USC. 1225(b)(1)(B)(v)]. Furthermore, for purposes of immigration law, the CFI is not considered an
immigration hearing or proceeding: those are presided over by an immigration judge (8 USC. §1229a) and,
therefore, asylum seekers are not afforded the already very limited rights that they would normally have at
a later stage of the process (American Immigration Lawyers Association 2016: 16). And although in theory
the law entitles asylum seekers to receive consultation from an attorney and to have the attorney present
during the CFI [8 C.F.R. §208.30(d)], immigration judges interpreting this provision have ruled that asylum
seekers are merely entitled to consultation, not representation by an attorney that could object to any errors
during the language interpretation process, at least for the crucial purpose of getting the objection on the
ofcial record for appellate purposes13 (García Hernández 2014: n.p.). In practice, however, a vast majority
of asylum seekers do not have access to an attorney to consult and prepare them prior to the CFI because
most secondary holding facilities are located in rural areas of Texas with limited availability of pro-bono
attorneys (American Immigration Lawyers Association 2016: 16).
Moreover, even if asylum seekers pass their CFI and are allowed to apply for asylum in the United States,
the effects of inefcient language interpretation during the CFI can have an overreaching detrimental impact
during their nal merits hearing. Once the CFI is over, asylum seekers are given a transcript of the interview
that will be used during their merits hearing as evidence of the asylum seeker’s claims for seeking asylum
in the United States (Garza 2017: n.p.). Any inconsistencies or inaccuracies between the transcript and the
asylum seeker’s in-court testimony during the nal merits hearing can be used by the prosecutor to attack the
asylum seeker’s credibility [8 USC. §1158(b)(1)(A-B)].
Ultimately, asylum in the United States is a discretionary form of relief granted by the Executive Ofce for
Immigration Review [8 USC. §1158(a)]. Therefore, even if asylum seekers are able to meet their burden and
prove all of the asylum elements, if the immigration judge (upon considering the totality of the circumstances
11 As previously mentioned, CFIs conducted in Texas are generally serviced by Lionbridge Global Solutions II, an over-the-phone
language interpretation agency (US Department of Homeland Security n.d.: n.p.).
12 The “signicant possibility” burden of proof is an easier standard to meet, as opposed to the more stringent “well-founded fear”
burden of proof applied by immigration courts during the merits hearing. In theory, the asylum ofcer has an afrmative duty to elicit
information from the interviewee to develop the record (US Department of Homeland Security 2014: 12).
13 Individuals that do not pass their CFI have a right to have an immigration judge review de novo the asylum seeker’s statements
to determine if she has met her “signicant possibility” burden of proof [8 C.F.R.§1003.42]. Under certain limited circumstances
the asylum seeker may be able to appeal the immigration judge’s criminal fear interview determination to the Board of Immigration
Appeals and, under even more limited circumstances, she may be able to take her appeal to the federal circuit courts system.
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Revista de Llengua i Dret, Journal of Language and Law, núm. 68, 2017 151
and all relevant facts) nds that the asylum seeker’s claims are not credible based on “the demeanor, candor,
or responsiveness of the applicant or witness, the inherent plausibility of the applicant’s or witness’s account,
[or] the consistency between the applicant’s or witness’s written and oral statements…,” among other
factors, the immigration judge has the discretion to deny asylum and to order the asylum seeker removed
[8 USC. §1158(b)(1)(B)(iii)]. Practicing immigration attorneys report cases of asylum denials based on the
inconsistencies between the CFI transcript and the verbal or written testimony presented during the nal
merits hearing, even when those inconsistencies are attributed to the fact that the asylum seeker did not
understand the interpreter (or the asylum ofcer through the interpreter) – or when the interpreter simply
misinterpreted something said during the credible fear interview14 (Garza 2017: n.p.).
In general, from start to nish, defensive asylum cases fall within the broad jurisdiction of the Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ), both of which are administrative branches
of the federal government. Unlike federal criminal and civil proceedings in the United States, which have
more constitutional constraints particularly within the context of language access to LEP individuals,
administrative agencies are afforded judicial deference with respect to the structure, rules, and decision-
making at an agency level as well as during their adjudicative proceedings (Martin & Super 2007: 598-99).
For instance, when an LEP individual faces criminal charges, most federal courts assign court-appointed,
federally certied interpreters to ensure that the accused’s due process and equal protection constitutional
rights are enforced (Abel 2013: 6-9). In contrast, it appears that the only requirement that interpreters must
comply with during administrative hearings is that the interpreter swears under oath that he or she has
provided an accurate interpretation [8 C.F.R. §1003.22]. And although DHS acknowledges the importance of
professional certied interpreters during immigration enforcement proceedings (US Department of Homeland
Security 2012: 2), it fails to create regulations imposing a certication requirement for interpreters involved
in immigration proceedings. Although this issue has not been resolved by federal courts or the legislature,
as mentioned before, given the judicial deference afforded to administrative agencies, it is a reasonable
prediction to say that courts would likely nd that DHS and DOJ15 meet their federal obligations to provide
language access services.
4 Discussion and conclusions
This article has sought to inform members of the judiciary, language mediators, translation studies scholars
and human rights activists of the practical and judicial reality of language access in borderland detention
centers on the United States – Mexico border, especially in direct relationship to the credible fear interview
in the asylum-seeking process. Focusing a critical lens on the unknown quality and inconsistent availability
of language access to migrants, especially those who are speakers of indigenous languages, has led to a
series of issues which merit further research and discussion. These questions directly touch upon issues of
due process, the practice of outsourcing of language service provision, the use of untested and untrained
interpreters in quasi-judicial settings, and a highly uncertain future for migrants at the dawn of the decidedly
anti-immigrant Trump presidency.
In legal terms, even though the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that all “persons” within the
US territory are afforded the same due process rights engraved in the US Constitution under its Fifth and
Fourteenth amendments, irrespective of their legal status in the country (Zadvydas v. Davis 2001: 693),
current immigration enforcement rules and practices seriously undermine that constitutional right. The
government’s refusal to provide free court-appointed attorneys has serious detrimental consequences that
result in prolonged detention and even wrongful deportations (Coon 2015: n.p.). Moreover, the Department
14 It is essential to point out that the “transcript” that asylum seekers are given is not a word-by-word written account in the original
language of what transpired during the CFI. Rather, they are given an English-language transcript of the conversation. Based on
anecdotal experience by one of the authors, these “transcripts” are sometimes redacted and polished to such an extent that some
asylum seekers do not recognize their own testimony.
15 The EOIR reports to employ over 90 staff interpreters for key languages and has established specic qualications that they must
meet, which include: (1) One year of specialized consecutive and simultaneous experience interpreting in a judicial environment;
(2) Comprehensive knowledge of the linguistic aspects of court interpretation; (3) Mastery of vocabulary, grammar, syntax, idiom,
colloquialism, culturally-based terms, and technical terms in English and a foreign language; and (4) A 3+ score on the Interagency
Language Round Table scale (US Department of Homeland Security n.d.:3). However, the EOIR does not require its staff interpreters
to be federally certied as interpreters.
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of Homeland Security’s decision to outsource its language interpreting services to third-party agencies calls
into question whether asylum seekers are put at signicant disadvantage when compared to the type of
interpreting services provided to undocumented LEP individuals facing federal criminal convictions, not to
mention the obvious due process violations that asylum seekers may experience due to the dire and inhumane
conditions to which they are exposed while in custody of Customs and Border Protection, Homeland Security,
or the Department of Justice.
Many unanswered questions and unexplored areas of inquiry remain in this quasi-legal asylum-seeking
realm. Indeed, the criminalization of immigration has led immigration and asylum procedures to occupy
a sort of grey zone. While it is often understood that “The main difference between civil and criminal
investigations is that civil cases are intended to lead to deportation and criminal cases are designed to lead
to incarceration” (Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, n.d.: n.p.), the massive expansion of the
practice of long-term incarceration of immigrants, even those who are not facing criminal charges, is simply
unprecedented. Ultimately, the expansion of immigration repression, “with ever-harsher enforcement,
arbitrary imprisonment, and indiscriminate deportations, has resulted in a global human rights crisis that
profoundly undermines modern democracies” (Amnesty International 2008 in Camayd-Freixas 2013: 16).
Interpreting in asylum settings is woefully under-researched and has been largely neglected so far in
Translation Studies (Pöllabauer 2006: 151; Pöllabauer 2004: 143), and little research has been done to
interrogate the role of interpreters in this quasi-legal context. In terms of power and control hierarchies, even
though researchers such as Pöllabauer (2006: 153) have observed attitudes of loyalty and “cooperativity”
emerge between ofcers and their interpreters, with interpreters managing the communication space and
even actively trying to resolve conicts which threaten the asylum ofcer’s face, other interpreters in asylum
settings describe their work as a hybrid area of the law (see Camayd-Freixas 2013) with moveable boundaries
and extreme ethical challenges. Pöllabauer reects upon the major inuence exerted by interpreters in such
processes, creating the potential for misunderstandings which could lead to “damage to the applicant’s
self-image, incorrect diagnosis, misleading information or nancial loss” (2006: 151) or, more seriously,
deportation to the applicant’s home country, “which may be tantamount to a death sentence” (2006: 151).
Interpreters in asylum hearings often assume discrepant roles that are not clear-cut and which, in fact, often
seem rather blurred. In the case of key moments in the asylum seeking process such as in the credible fear
interview, the role of language mediators must be more closely examined if only because of the appreciable
impact they exert over the outcome.
To compound the confusion, language access for detainees is (un)managed primarily by non-professionals,
a key aspect of the afrmative asylum process which needs to be analyzed given the fact that during USCIS
(United States Department of Customs and Immigration Services) asylum interviews, applicants have to bring
their own interpreter. Moreover, no specic training exists for interpreting in asylum hearing settings in many
countries (Pöllabauer, 2004: 145), and no consensus seems to exist on the role of interpreters, the demands made
of them or their effect on the proceedings (Pöllabauer, 2004: 148). Even professional (trained, experienced,
and/or certied) court interpreters are unprepared for work in detention centers. In other words, even those
accustomed to working in immigration or criminal courts now face unprecedented ethical challenges in this
changing landscape as a result of the growing trend towards criminalizing immigration, “so prevalent in
recent years in the United States that jurists have identied it as a new hybrid and highly unstable area of the
law they ironically term ‘crimmigration’ (Camayd-Freixas 2013: 16).16 The emotional toll on attorneys and
language mediators also remains under-examined, with some practitioners calling for greater attention to the
role of advocacy for (not just within) judicial interpreting. Camayd-Freixas describes the fear, isolation and
disenfranchisement felt by working in an atmosphere characterized by the erosion of “democratic principles
and constitutional protections, including abuse of process, arbitrary detention, intimidation, and torture”
(2013: 20), examples of abuse to which interpreters are forced to become tacitly complicit.17
16 See Camayd-Freixas 2009 for a more detailed account of the now infamous Postville raid, the unprecedented, largest single raid
of a workplace in US history. At the Postville, Iowa meat packing plant, nearly 400 immigrant workers were victims of a fast-tracked
mass incarceration. Some 300 workers were convicted, sentenced and incarcerated on charges of identity theft, document fraud, the
use of stolen social security numbers, and similar charges.
17 For example, Gentry’s 2015 report calls for interpretation services for LEP detainees specically for the prevention and reporting
of sexual abuse and assault (12).
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The well-documented inux of migrants and unaccompanied minors in 2014 did not mark the end of massive
inows of newcomers and a mounting humanitarian crisis with no reliable, qualied language access
infrastructure. In fact, the crisis did not stop when the headlines did. According to Border Patrol statistics,
“46,195 people were apprehended on the southwest border in October [2016] – an increase from recent
months and a rise of 41% from the previous October” (Dart 2016: n.p.). Furthermore, at the time of this
writing, Donald Trump has been in ofce as President of the United States for mere months, and one of his
rst executive orders, that of January 27th, 2017,18 portends the likelihood that language access for asylum
seekers in the US will be detrimentally impacted given the new administration’s stance on issues of asylum
and immigration in general.
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