Liberians in United States Face Deportation Deadline

Law professor Jessica Slavin writes about the moral and legal dilemma of looming forced repatriation of Liberians who fled from a war zone but didn't meet the technical criteria for a grant of asylum.

[T]he situation of these Liberians is "pretty relevant to some of our current readings" in my asylum law seminar. Indeed, the situation of the Liberians facing possible deportation later this year illustrates two of the most important ideas in the course:  (1) the legal definition of "refugee" does not include people fleeing from generalized civil war conditions, and (2) offering "temporary" humanitarian protection in place of permanent refugee status to such individuals is problematic, because countries experiencing civil war do not become stable very quickly, and human beings build new lives in the meantime.

To get asylum in the United States, you must prove that you meet the legal definition of a "refugee," that is, you are fleeing from persecution "on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion."  That is why people fleeing from generalized conditions that threaten human life, such as civil war, fall outside of the legal definition of "refugee": the persecution they fear is not "on account of" one of the five protected grounds.

Thus, while many Liberians I worked with were "refugees" within this legal definition because they feared being targeted due to their political or family relationships, or their ethnic background, many others were not, because they could not establish that they would be targeted on account of one of the special "protected grounds."  It was difficult to explain to the latter group that they were not "refugees." 

At the time, I was therefore very glad that the United States had determined to grant Liberians who arrived during certain designated periods a "temporary protected status," or TPS. At least there was some protection to offer most Liberians we interviewed.

Now, though, ten, eleven years later, thinking of people who have been establishing lives here, now facing the prospect of being forced to return to Liberia, I wish that at that time I had worried more about the fact that for so many of them, their protected status was only "temporary," at least in name.

Temporary protected status is inherently problematic for the reasons Slavin outlines and I wrote about here.  I became aware of some of the problems of the Liberian community for the same reason Prof. Slavin did: working with Liberian clients.  For that reason, I know that some Liberians now in limbo should have qualified for asylum, but butted up against the dysfunctional immigration court system and lost.

The best solution is broad immigration reform, including a retooling of the court system to remedy the procedural flaws and discretionary abuses that have become common in recent years.

But that is not going to happen by March 31.  By the end of next month, the federal government is going to have to decide whether it is going to deport thousands of people who fled from hell on earth.