On the same day in December 2012, two events highlighted continuing challenges for asylum seekers in New York. One was the unsealing of nine indictments announced by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District against 26 individuals, including six attorneys, for conspiring to make allegedly fraudulent asylum claims.1 The other was the release of the Second Circuit’s opinion in Gashi v. Holder,2 which rejected attempts by the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA), the highest administrative tribunal in immigration law, to make it harder for legitimate applicants to obtain asylum.
The indictments were the result of an investigation originally prompted by the New York Asylum office of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and which eventually involved the combined efforts of the FBI, the NYPD, and USCIS. They demonstrate that unscrupulous counsel for immigrantsthe subject of years of advocacy in the legal communityand fraud on immigration applications remains a real problem. At the same time, it is critical to note, as the Gashi case illustrates, that much of the difficulty in representing New York asylum seekers has been in obtaining meaningful adjudication from immigration judges and the Board of Immigration Appeals. Ultimately, however, these issues have the same solution: competent, affordable or appointed representation for all potential asylum seekers in New York.
