{"id":20813,"date":"2017-01-31T06:09:48","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T06:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=20813"},"modified":"2017-01-31T06:09:48","modified_gmt":"2017-01-31T06:09:48","slug":"migrants-were-told-to-sign-away-right-to-enter-u-s-lawyers-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/migrants-were-told-to-sign-away-right-to-enter-u-s-lawyers-say.html","title":{"rendered":"Migrants Were Told to Sign Away Right to Enter U.S., Lawyers Say"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Migrants Were Told to Sign Away Right to Enter U.S., Lawyers Say<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Migrants Were Told to Sign Away Right to Enter U.S., Lawyers Say:-<\/strong> Since President Trump closed the country to people from seven predominantly Muslim countries, immigration agents have wrongly told some travelers arriving legally that they must sign documents forfeiting their right to enter, according to immigration lawyers and migrants.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some people \u2014 it is not clear how many \u2014 holding valid visas signed the forms and were sent away, they say; others refused to sign, were detained and were allowed to enter the United States after hours or days in custody. Lawyers for those migrants asserted that some immigration agents did not explain the documents that travelers were being told to sign and threatened them, without any legal basis, with being barred from the country for years if they did not comply.<\/span><\/p>\n

The people affected are from countries whose citizens are barred for 90 days from travel to the United States, under an executive order Mr. Trump signed on Friday: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. The president said the nation needed tougher screening to prevent infiltration by Islamist terrorists.<\/span><\/p>\n

Immigrant advocates obtained court orders blocking implementation of parts of that order. But lawyers who flocked to a number of airports to represent migrants said United States Customs and Border Protection agents there repeatedly resorted to coercion and deception to deny entry.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Department of Homeland Security, which includes Customs and Border Protection, said it could not comment on matters under litigation. It referred questions about airport procedures to the customs agency, which did not respond to requests for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n

After visiting her parents in Austria, Sara Yarjani, an Iranian, flew back to California, where she is a master\u2019s degree student.<\/span><\/p>\n

At Los Angeles International Airport, she said, she was questioned repeatedly, searched and ordered to remove her shoelaces, shawl and jewelry. She spent 23 hours in detention and said she could hear immigration officers debating the policy, uncertain of what to do. Finally, she said, an officer said she could not enter the country because her student visa was no longer valid, though he would not explain why. Her lawyers said the officer was wrong.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ms. Yarjani, 35, said the officer told her, \u201cEither you comply and agree to leave voluntarily, by signing a document, or if you do not comply we will have to forcibly deport you, which will face you with a re-entry ban to the United States of one to five years or longer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very traumatizing and scary,\u201d said Ms. Yarjani, who is studying holistic health. \u201cIt felt surreal and hard to believe that was actually happening.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On Saturday night, as armed officers walked her to a flight to Austria, she saw that a judge had halted deportations. She alerted the officers, but they ignored her and put her on the plane.<\/span><\/p>\n

Saba, an Iranian graduate student, rented an apartment in Manhattan last year and bought furniture and dishes for it. On Saturday, when she returned from a trip to Europe, an immigration officer at Kennedy International Airport told her that she could not enter.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was crying. I couldn\u2019t even talk,\u201d said Saba, who did not want her surname used, but showed The New York Times her student visa, with a 2018 expiration date.<\/span><\/p>\n

At an officer\u2019s direction, she said, she signed a small electronic window, like the ones used for credit card purchases, without knowing what she was signing. Then the officer gave her a copy of the form and told her that she had voluntarily withdrawn her application to enter the country.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI said: \u2018No, it\u2019s you telling me to leave. I\u2019m not willing to!\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cHe said: \u2018It\u2019s better this way, ma\u2019am. Otherwise I have to force you.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

She was put on a flight to Switzerland, her visa stamped in big red letters: \u201cCanceled \u2014 N.Y.C. application withdrawn.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hesam, an Iranian-born American citizen, helped his ailing parents, who do not speak English, get immigrant visas, and they arrived on Saturday in Abu Dhabi for a connecting flight to Los Angeles. He said the American immigration agents there enlisted a translator, who spoke an unfamiliar dialect and told them they would benefit from signing a form they could not read.<\/span><\/p>\n

They did, and on Sunday they were flown back to Tehran.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey said, \u2018Well, the way they presented it, we thought it\u2019s a normal process, we have to do this,\u2019\u201d said Hesam, who did not want his surname used because he feared jeopardizing his parents\u2019 case. It should have been \u201cthe best day of my life,\u201d he said, but instead, \u201cit turns out to be one of the worst days of our lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Two brothers from Yemen, a country racked by civil war, were detained at Dulles International Airport in Virginia on Saturday, and put on a flight to Ethiopia hours later, according to a federal lawsuit filed on Monday. After years of effort, the brothers, Tareq Aqel Mohammed Aziz, 21, and Ammar Aqel Mohammed Aziz, 19, had obtained immigrant visas to join their father, an American citizen.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey were told falsely that there would be all these negative consequences if they chose not to sign the forms in front of them, like being barred from coming back for five years,\u201d said Simon Y. Sandoval-Moshenberg of the Legal Aid Justice Center, one of the lawyers who filed the suit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Administration officials at first said even legal permanent residents of the United States could not return, but later said they could. There is still confusion about whether the order applies to people with temporary visas.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey want you to sign so they can say they didn\u2019t deport you, you left voluntarily,\u201d said Becca Heller, director of the International Refugee Assistance Project, one of the groups that obtained a court order.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the plaintiffs in our lawsuit, they kept telling one of them, \u2018Just sign this and you can go,\u2019 and he didn\u2019t know what it was because he only spoke Arabic,\u201d she said. The man refused to sign, and was later released.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2017\/01\/30\/us\/migrants-documents-travel-ban.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fus&action=click&contentCollection=us&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=8&pgtype=sectionfront<\/span><\/div>\n

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