Week 2
This week I had the chance to go to another asylum hearing. Unlike last week, where the client got to give her testimony without any rebuttal, this time the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA – the legal division of ICE) decided that they wanted to cross-examine the respondent.
In a lot of asylum proceedings (and a lot of immigration proceedings in general), the asylum-seeker doesn’t speak English fluently. Even if they do speak English, some don’t feel comfortable enough with it to want to be cross-examined in English instead of in their native language – which is completely understandable, given how high the stakes are. This means that the proceedings require an official interpreter. If the person speaks Spanish, this usually isn’t a problem. Unfortunately, if they speak a less-common language (not necessarily uncommon), the process of finding and scheduling an interpreter can extend the proceedings. This hearing is the fourth attempt, and the court had to fly an interpreter in from New York City for the day. Atlanta is by no means a small city, and there are thousands of people in the area who speak his language. But none of them are official, so instead his case drags on for months.
Once the proceedings get going, they can sometimes get difficult to watch. In cross-examination, cultural differences, like using a different calendar, become “inconsistencies.” There are hitches when certain military terminology is difficult to translate. Precision is both essential and incredibly difficult, especially when it is not just the term in the native language that has to match, but also the translation used in the written affidavit. He answers the questions the interpreter asks him, but they don’t fully capture the nuance of the English, and so there is a back-and-forth as the OPLA attorney tries to refine her questions into language that will translate into the questions she wants to ask.
It’s her job to be a zealous advocate, but after nearly six hours, I can’t help but wonder why it has to work this way at all. The adversarial process is inefficient at best, and in many cases, like this one, it seems counter-productive. Even to people who support harsh immigration laws, this man is one of the “deserving” people that the asylum process is meant to serve – he fought against the Taliban and he’s a religious and ethnic minority. Most Americans think that people like this fly through the process, that the hurdles are only supposed to catch people trying to cheat the system. Instead, the asylum system casts a net so wide that it traps everyone.