ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Under the U.N. Convention Against Torture, the U.S. is not allowed to deport migrants back to their home countries who are likely to be tortured by their own governments. But the Trump administration has been changing how it handles asylum-seekers, first blocking people from requesting asylum at the southern border and now changing how it processes people who say they are likely to be tortured if they are sent home. The California Newsroom's Mark Betancourt has been following the case of one woman whose treatment reflects some of these changes. Hi, Mark.
MARK BETANCOURT, BYLINE: Hi, Ari.
SHAPIRO: Before we get to this particular case, how is the Convention Against Torture supposed to work?
BETANCOURT: So to get this protection, people have to go to immigration court to make their case. But first, they have to have an interview with an asylum officer to make sure their fear of torture is credible, basically. And that screening interview seems to be working very differently since President Trump signed an executive order back in January suspending asylum access at the southern border.
SHAPIRO: Tell us about what's changed.
BETANCOURT: So the government has not been forthcoming about this, so we've been sort of piecing it together from different sources. But the order seems to have stripped protections for people going through these Convention Against Torture screenings. It used to be that you had time before the screening to find a lawyer, and they could be at that screening with you. Also, if the asylum officer said, basically, no, your fear is not credible, you could appeal that decision in court. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
We got a hold of the new federal guidelines for asylum officers through public court filings, and according to these new guidelines, all those protections are now gone - no lawyer, no appeal option. I spoke with quite a few immigration attorneys, and they confirmed that this is how things are working. And they say these screenings are now shorter. They used to last as long as a few hours. Now, some are only lasting a few minutes. And people are getting denied at the screening stage without any explanation.
SHAPIRO: And does that mean that people who fear torture in their home countries are actually being deported?
BETANCOURT: Yes. We've been following the case of this woman from Ethiopia who is currently in immigration detention outside San Diego. We're not naming her because she's scared of retribution for herself and her family back in Ethiopia. According to her attorney, she says that she was tortured by Ethiopian officials after she inadvertently saw the military execute a group of people. She says they threw her in prison for more than a week and beat her and threatened her and her family just for having been a witness.
She did have a screening interview with an asylum officer, like we talked about earlier. But even though attorneys say someone like her really should qualify for protection under the Convention Against Torture, the officer denied her. And under the new rules, that's it - no appeal. Right now, it looks like she'll be deported back to Ethiopia. And this is just one of a number of stories I've heard from attorneys across the country.
SHAPIRO: Do you have any way of knowing how many people are affected by these changes?
BETANCOURT: Basically, no - all we have are these anecdotal examples, like this woman's, because the government stopped publishing data about these screenings when President Trump took office. We do know that last year, more than 20,000 people passed these screenings. That was before they stopped publishing them. But there's no way to know if that number would be similar now because border crossings have gone down so much. I spoke with Natalie Cadwalader-Schultheis. She's an attorney at Human Rights First. She thinks the government has made this whole process opaque on purpose.
NATALIE CADWALADER-SCHULTHEIS: They don't want us looking under the hood. They don't want us to understand it because if we did, I think it would be very apparent just how illegal and much of the sham this whole thing is.
BETANCOURT: I should add that her organization said in a recent report that some migrants who say they're afraid to return to their countries aren't even getting these screenings. They're just being deported.
SHAPIRO: What does the Department of Homeland Security say about this?
BETANCOURT: I asked DHS about each change to the Convention Against Torture screening guidelines and the allegations in the Human Rights First report. They did not answer my questions. They just sent some links to what seem to be outdated public websites that don't even reflect these changes. I also asked about this Ethiopian woman's case in particular, and they said they wouldn't answer questions about specific cases. Now, there are a couple of federal court cases challenging the president's executive order, so we'll see what happens there.
SHAPIRO: That is Mark Betancourt with the California Newsroom. Thank you.
BETANCOURT: Thank you.
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