In another case, "a Bangladeshi asylum seeker told USCIRF he was turned away at a port of entry and told to seek asylum in Mexico."
Chinese asylum-seekers were met with skepticism by Border Patrol agents "because they could not name the church they attended," the commission noted. "The official did not know that many Chinese Christians worship at home."
One woman told Border Patrol that she was indeed afraid to return to Guatemala and was not coming to the U.S. to find work. However, her case read the opposite – she had come looking for work and was not afraid to be sent back home.
"Asylum officers reported to USCIRF that this was a common occurrence," the report added. "They also said that they were seeing many forms with identical answers, and others with clearly erroneous ones."
"Border Patrol personnel oftentimes are truly, truly doing the best they can," Arriaga told CNA. "They just don't have the equipment, the tools, or the training to do this properly."
Even if asylum-seekers were deemed by officials to have a "credible fear" of returning home, they were often placed in detention centers until a federal immigration court decided their case.
"USCIRF found that asylum seekers continue to be detained under inappropriate penal conditions before their credible fear interviews, and in some cases, even after being found to have a credible fear," the report said.
The conditions of the detention centers resembled that of prisons, it added. There is no privacy for men, women, and children there, Arriaga said, and "most importantly" there is no "access to legal assistance."
"We see children suffering depression, tremendous anxiety," she continued, and all this could be avoided if the Department of Homeland Security began putting into practice the commission's 2005 recommendations, as well as its own 2009 policies. "These people would not be held for such a lengthy amount of time," she said.
"How we treat people who come to our borders says a lot about who we are as Americans," Arriaga continued.
"No one is arguing let everyone in without screening. We owe them, simply out of human dignity, the possibility of making their case at the border. And that is not being given to the people that come to the border."
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This article was originally published on CNA Aug. 4, 2016.
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.