SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Brian Lopez recently drove more than 500 miles from Northern California to Tijuana, Mexico, just south of the border, where he and other legal experts gathered to offer free guidance to people seeking asylum in the United States.
Lopez, a Sacramento-based immigration attorney, said it’s important work — especially because only a small fraction of asylum seekers can obtain legal help as they formally submit their cases to the immigration courts.
“It’s a pretty complex process,” Lopez said. “It’s definitely not easy.”
These are people seeking a new life in this country to escape threats of violence, political retribution or severe poverty.
But California immigrant advocacy groups said asylum seekers arrive here and find themselves being used as “pawns” in the latest political debate between calls for strengthening border security and comprehensive immigration reform that offers a real path to legal resident status and U.S. citizenship.
A Texas state law, Senate Bill 4 currently under appeal in federal court, makes entering Texas illegally a state crime and allows state judges to order that migrants who violate the law be deported, Newsweek reported. The Biden administration and immigration advocates argue the Texas law is unconstitutional and that that authority rests with the federal government.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a March 20 post on X, formerly Twitter, he will continue to instruct the Texas National Guard to “erect razor wire to repel migrants & keep buoy barriers in river.” Those who support the Texas law say the Biden administration isn’t doing enough to secure the border.
Lopez said it’s these “political stunts” that inhibit an immigrant’s ability to seek asylum legally in court, while promoting falsehoods about the immigration process. He said immigrants can’t apply for asylum outside of the United States; only certain refugees can, and…
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