In November, Senator Jeff Merkley (OR) released a detailed report on the systemic damage done to the US asylum system under President Trump’s administration. Senator Merkley was the first Senator to visit the United States/Mexico border in connection to the emerging human rights abuses of the Child Separation Policy. He has consistently been a strong advocate for immigrants and the asylum process. His report, Shattered Refuge: A U.S. Senate Investigation into the Trump Administration’s Gutting of Asylum, brings to light new evidence, including previously covered-up whistleblowers, that reveal fatal and devastating shortcomings in the current asylum process.

This report goes to the heart of PTV’s work and the system we work in day-to-day. The lives of the torture survivors for whom we advocate swing on the effectiveness and the judiciousness of the asylum process. If you feel connected to our work and want to stay informed on the state of immigration at a tumultuous time, please take a look at the report and its findings.

Here are the main takeaways of Shattered Refuge, as laid out on Senator Merkley’s website:

• When asylum officers found that an applicant had a legitimate reason to fear staying in Mexico until their asylum court date, those decisions were reviewed by political supervisors. Decisions to send migrants back to Mexico were not reviewed, while decisions that migrants should remain in the U.S. for their safety were forwarded on to supervisors, and in some cases all the way up to headquarters. Whistleblowers reported that in nearly all cases where asylum officers found that asylum seekers should be allowed to await their hearing within the U.S. for safety reasons, they were overruled by their superiors, with one whistleblower reporting that it would take “Herculean efforts” to get final approval on any recommendation to allow an asylum seeker to wait in the U.S.

• Trained asylum officers strenuously objected to being forced to implement the administration’s programs, such as “Migrant Protection Protocols”/Remain in Mexico, that appear to be in clear violation of domestic and international asylum law. One whistleblower, who refused to participate in MPP on both legal and moral grounds, wrote in a letter that “[i]mplementation of a program for which there is no legal authority violates my oath to office.” The asylum officer noted that the U.S. is bound by law not to discriminate against refugees on the basis of their race, religion, or nationality, and not to penalize refugees for how they enter the country to claim asylum. “However, the MPP both discriminates and penalizes,” the officer continued. “Implementation of the MPP is clearly designed to further this administration’s racist agenda of keeping Hispanic and Latino populations from entering the United States.”

• Whistleblowers reported that former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Asylum Division head John L. Lafferty was forced out of his job by Acting USCIS Director Ken Cuccinelli. This forced reassignment resulted in the perception among rank-and-file officers that Lafferty was fired for applying asylum law as written rather than skewing it to meet the administration’s political goals.

• In mid-August 2019, UCSIS ended standardized training for new asylum officers. This training was previously mandatory for all asylum officers, to ensure consistency across the nation and to reduce the risk of bias and inconsistency among USCIS field offices. Without standardized trainings, new asylum officers are likely to be trained by politically-installed leaders and more vulnerable to pressure from supervisors to deny as many asylum claims as possible.

• CBP officers sent late-term pregnant women back to Mexico under the “Migrant Protection Protocols” or “Remain in Mexico” policy, despite the fact that individuals with known health issues are supposed to be exempted from the program. In one case, doctors gave a woman who was already experiencing contractions medication to stop the contractions so that she could be sent back across the border to Mexico.

• The administration’s “Zero Tolerance” policy—more commonly known as family separation—was intentionally formulated to deter asylum seekers. In internal documents, administration officials theorized that reports of family members being arrested and separated from children would reach potential asylum seekers in Central America, deterring them from presenting themselves at the U.S.-Mexico border so that they could spare their families those circumstances.

• The administration intentionally increased prosecutions and detentions without a plan for appropriate space to hold increased numbers of migrants in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention. As a result, many facilities became dangerously overcrowded. As reported by DHS’s own Inspector General, some facilities were found to be more than 500% over capacity when inspected.

• At least seven Central American children died in U.S. custody between September 2018 and May 2019, including three from the flu. In the U.S. as a whole, the rate of pediatric death from the flu is only two per one million, indicating that medical breakdowns within the detention system likely contributed to these deaths.

• As of July 2019, more than 4,000 migrant children with no identified sponsor were being held in the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) child detention system. Without a sponsor, these children could conceivably be held in detention for years on end while their asylum cases are adjudicated. The report finds that shortage of sponsors is likely directly linked to a new policy created by the Trump administration in 2018, which began sharing sponsors’ and their family members’ immigration status with immigration enforcement agencies.