Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. In twenty eighteen, twenty
Speaker 1: nine year old Urandi Valdez fled Cuba, where he was
Speaker 1: born and raised. He'd been targeted by the police, put
Speaker 1: in prison, and he feared for his life. Monte Real,
Speaker 1: a senior investigator for Bloomberg, says Valdees made it months
Speaker 1: later to the US Mexico border.
Speaker 2: He crossed a bridge across the Rio Grande to McCallen, Texas,
Speaker 2: and there's a border patrol station on the US side
Speaker 2: of that bridge, and he turned himself into border patrol
Speaker 2: officers and announced that he wanted to apply for asylum.
Speaker 1: Valdez was one of tens of thousands of people that
Speaker 1: year who hoped the US government would agree with them
Speaker 1: that life in their home countries had become too dangerous.
Speaker 1: Monty says that as soon as Valdez told border patrol
Speaker 1: he wanted to apply for asylum, an agent peppered him
Speaker 1: with questions. He was given what's known as a credible
Speaker 1: fear interview.
Speaker 2: And so they asked him the nature of his fears
Speaker 2: in Cuba, and so he really started to think about this,
Speaker 2: and he wasn't sure where to start.
Speaker 1: Because there was so much to say. There was the
Speaker 1: story of what had happened to his dad. At the time,
Speaker 1: it had been illegal to operate a private business in Cuba,
Speaker 1: but Valdez's dad defied those rules. He ran an auto
Speaker 1: shop and owned a food cart. He was arrested and
Speaker 1: found guilty of enrichment at the expense of the state.
Speaker 2: And so when Valdez was a kid, his father was
Speaker 2: in jail for almost fifteen years.
Speaker 1: His dad escaped the country and was legally admitted to
Speaker 1: the US. But then Monty says, Valdez became a target.
Speaker 2: He himself had a churo cart, you know, selling snacks.
Speaker 2: Those carts were confiscated by the government. He was thrown
Speaker 2: in jail. He in fact became so disenchanted with the
Speaker 2: Cuban government that he actually got a tattoo on his forearm.
Speaker 2: In the tattoo said that Cuba is a prison of
Speaker 2: the living debt, and.
Speaker 1: That small act of protest made things worse. He believed
Speaker 1: someone saw that tattoo and reported him.
Speaker 2: The jail authorities threatened to burn it off, and in
Speaker 2: fact they singed his arm by the tattoo with a
Speaker 2: hot spoon.
Speaker 1: Valdez tried to leave Cuba over and over again, but
Speaker 1: he was caught and arrested. So in twenty eighteen he
Speaker 1: felt some relief. He made it to US soil he
Speaker 1: had an opportunity to make his case, and that border
Speaker 1: patrol agent found Valdez's fear of persecution credible. But this
Speaker 1: was just the first step in what became a year's
Speaker 1: long process, and what happened next shows how capricious, and
Speaker 1: monte says how broken the US asylum process is. This
Speaker 1: is the big take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gera,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, a story about one person
Speaker 1: who applied for asylum in the US in the last decade,
Speaker 1: one of hundreds of thousands, and experience tells us about
Speaker 1: how arbitrary and unjust that system is. After Urande Valdez
Speaker 1: made it through that first interview at the border, the
Speaker 1: agent had to decide whether to let Valdez live with
Speaker 1: his dad before a court hearing, or if he should
Speaker 1: be detained, and Bloomberg's Monte Real says he chose the latter.
Speaker 2: If you talk to immigration lawyers, they will say that
Speaker 2: these decisions to detain or to parole often feel arbitrary,
Speaker 2: that there's no real reason behind them. Technically, the reason
Speaker 2: given for Valdez's becoming a detainee was that he was
Speaker 2: a flight risk.
Speaker 1: In the US, more than eighty percent of asylum seekers
Speaker 1: get parole, but Valdez was not one of them, and
Speaker 1: according to Monty, that denial made it less likely Valdez's
Speaker 1: application for asylum would be approved. The next question then
Speaker 1: was where he would be detained, and Monte says the
Speaker 1: answer was, as it often is with asylum case, wherever
Speaker 1: there's space.
Speaker 2: So he is transferred to a detention facility in rural Louisiana.
Speaker 1: Back then, around twenty eighteen, Ice opened up several new
Speaker 1: detention centers in the American South. Valdez was sent to
Speaker 1: one of them. It's in the small town of Pine Prairie,
Speaker 1: and getting sent there, Monty says, made his odds of
Speaker 1: getting asylum even tougher.
Speaker 2: It just so happens that when you get assigned to
Speaker 2: a detention center, your case travels to that location. So
Speaker 2: if he had been, for example, sent to New York City,
Speaker 2: about twenty nine percent of asylum cases in New York
Speaker 2: City are denied and those people are ordered deported In Louisiana,
Speaker 2: where he was sent. More than eighty percent are denied,
Speaker 2: so that was a pretty fateful circumstance.
Speaker 1: Valdez, like many others, would learn that in the asylum says,
Speaker 1: geography matters, and something else that can make a huge difference,
Speaker 1: Monty says, is which immigration judge gets your case. His
Speaker 1: was assigned to Agnellus Reese.
Speaker 2: He got a judge who in the eleven years, the
Speaker 2: past eleven years before his case, had heard hundreds of
Speaker 2: asylum cases and hadn't granted asylum to a single one
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: About six months later, Valdez got his day in court.
Speaker 2: He was there, his father was there as a supporting witness,
Speaker 2: and the proceeding is held essentially like a trial. There's
Speaker 2: a government attorney who's acting sort of as prosecutor, and
Speaker 2: this is an attorney with a Department of Homeland Security
Speaker 2: who essentially is arguing for deportation. The judge is overseeing
Speaker 2: all of this and throwing in questions of her own,
Speaker 2: and so it becomes a hearing that will serve as
Speaker 2: sort of a one day trial. This is his chance
Speaker 2: to present his case.
Speaker 1: Now. One of the key differences between immigration courts and
Speaker 1: civil courts or criminal courts, is that immigration courts fall
Speaker 1: under the executive branch, not the judicial branch.
Speaker 2: So the person who's overseeing the immigration courts is actually
Speaker 2: the Attorney General, which is a political appointee. So one
Speaker 2: of the reasons a lot of people want reform in
Speaker 2: the system as they say that these immigration courts are
Speaker 2: more susceptible to political meddling political influence because of that structure.
Speaker 1: Four months before Valdez's hearing, Jeff Sessions, who was the
Speaker 1: US Attorney General at the time, put in place a
Speaker 1: quota system that required every immigration court judge to make
Speaker 1: at least seven hundred rulings every year. All of a sudden,
Speaker 1: everyone had a busy docket, and Monte says that's reflected
Speaker 1: in the court records.
Speaker 2: There was pressure on judges to move cases through their
Speaker 2: courtrooms quickly, and in the transcripts you can definitely see
Speaker 2: that come through with the judge in Valdez's case, the
Speaker 2: judge was definitely in a hurry. Valdes was presenting his
Speaker 2: evidence through a translator, and there were several times in
Speaker 2: the hearing where the translation was imprecise.
Speaker 1: At one point, the immigration judge asked Valdes about what
Speaker 1: happened when Cuban police gave him trouble for having that
Speaker 1: snack cart.
Speaker 2: He used the verb deco messar, which in Spanish means confiscated.
Speaker 2: They were confiscated the translator, she said decommiserated, and the
Speaker 2: judge had a problem understanding what she meant, and really
Speaker 2: kind of took out that misunderstanding on Valdez. She ruled
Speaker 2: that he was being unresponsive.
Speaker 1: That wasn't the only thing that stood out to Monty
Speaker 1: when he read the transcript of Valdez's court hearing. The
Speaker 1: judge believed there were inconsistencies in Valdez's story.
Speaker 2: He had told her in the courtroom that during one
Speaker 2: of the periods where he was jailed, that the officers
Speaker 2: had beaten him with a club, hit him in the
Speaker 2: head and had fractured his skull. And she went back
Speaker 2: and looked at the Credible Fear interview and the Credible
Speaker 2: Fear interview. Keep in mind, it's not a verbatim transcript.
Speaker 2: These are just notes that are taken summary notes by
Speaker 2: the interviewing officer. And in that interview he said that
Speaker 2: he had been hid in the head with a police
Speaker 2: stick and that it had broken opened his head and
Speaker 2: created a wound.
Speaker 1: The judge seized on that difference. Hal Valdez described something
Speaker 1: as a fracture in her courtroom and as a wound
Speaker 1: in that first conversation with border patrol. In this interview
Speaker 1: with asylum officers, she wrote, he did not mention his
Speaker 1: head being fractured. This was something at the heart of
Speaker 1: the claim, she said, and rendered his testimony non credible.
Speaker 1: Judge Reese denied Valdez's request for asylum. She retired in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, and she did not respond to Bloomberg's
Speaker 1: request for comment. How common is it to have a
Speaker 1: proceeding go this way as you just kind of look
Speaker 1: at others further to be difficulties with translation or cultural misunderstanding.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you talk to immigration lawyers who've had a
Speaker 2: lot of experience in these courts, they are full of
Speaker 2: stories about mistranslations, about misinterpretations of testimony, of judges who
Speaker 2: are hurried and who in some cases display a sort
Speaker 2: of callousness towards the people who are testifying. And you know,
Speaker 2: in some cases, sure there are people who are entering
Speaker 2: the asylum system with claims that are invalid that just
Speaker 2: don't hold up. But there are people who have gone
Speaker 2: through trauma and who enter these court rooms and who
Speaker 2: face judges that oftentimes are hurried and don't give their
Speaker 2: cases the hearing that they might deserve.
Speaker 1: Under the current system, judges are routinely required to deliver
Speaker 1: an oral decision at the conclusion of a hearing, immediately
Speaker 1: after the testimony is given, without adjourning. One former immigration
Speaker 1: judge told Monty that means two similar cases can have
Speaker 1: very different outcomes depending on the judge. In an Ohio case,
Speaker 1: for example, a twenty two year old woman testified she'd
Speaker 1: been raped by military officers. They were looking for her relatives,
Speaker 1: who were activists that asylum applicants said they'd found her
Speaker 1: alone at home early one morning. The immigration judge in
Speaker 1: Ohio overseeing that case denied her request, saying the assault
Speaker 1: could not be considered state sanctioned violence because in Cameroon quote,
Speaker 1: police officers are not allowed to enter a private home
Speaker 1: at night in search of a criminal suspect end quote.
Speaker 1: Valdez pressed on he took the decision in his case
Speaker 1: to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which is the pellet
Speaker 1: body of US immigration courts. But Monte says Valdez recognized
Speaker 1: his odds were getting even worse.
Speaker 2: That body sustains the vast majority of cases that they hear,
Speaker 2: so whenever it came time for his appeal, it was
Speaker 2: a last ditch effort and one that he knew he
Speaker 2: probably wasn't going to win.
Speaker 1: Valdez was sent back to Pine Prairie, Louisiana, to that
Speaker 1: ice detention center. Six months later, after Valdez submitted his appeal,
Speaker 1: the board denied his request.
Speaker 2: He was put on a deportation flight to Havana and
Speaker 2: the plane lands in Havana at the airport and even
Speaker 2: before he gets off the plane, the police are waiting
Speaker 2: for him.
Speaker 1: After the break another turn in the story of Urandi
Speaker 1: Valdes and what his story says about who is and
Speaker 1: who isn't being granted asylum in the US today. Urany
Speaker 1: Valde has spent more than a year in an IC
Speaker 1: detention facility in Pine Prairie, Louisiana, after an immigration judge
Speaker 1: rejected his application for asylum and before a board denied
Speaker 1: his appeal. I asked Bloomberg's Monty Reel how the asylum
Speaker 1: system in the US is supposed to work. If it's
Speaker 1: supposed to take this long.
Speaker 2: Someone who is being persecuted by their home government, they
Speaker 2: apply for asylum, and then their case goes before a judge,
Speaker 2: and the person is supposed to present their case to
Speaker 2: the judge, The judge hears it and makes a ruling quickly,
Speaker 2: and that person either then is on the path for
Speaker 2: citizenship in the United States or they're deported. And it's
Speaker 2: supposed to be a pretty quick process. But the reality
Speaker 2: is that these cases now drag on for.
Speaker 1: Years, partly because of how many cases there are, how
Speaker 1: many migrants are asking for asylum.
Speaker 2: Well, the court system has just become increasingly overwhelmed with
Speaker 2: cases and a backlog of cases. So since twenty sixteen,
Speaker 2: that backlog of immigration court cases has grown from about
Speaker 2: five hundred thousand to about three point seven million, and
Speaker 2: asylum cases of loan they're a part of that backlog.
Speaker 2: They account for about one point three million of those cases.
Speaker 1: Monte says. Asylum seekers and lawyers alike, and even some
Speaker 1: immigration judges themselves, argue the system is in sore need
Speaker 1: of reform.
Speaker 2: One of the things that the judges themselves say is
Speaker 2: that there's too much political influence in the system. There
Speaker 2: are also a lot of judges in especially rural immigration courts,
Speaker 2: places like rural Louisiana, where there's not a huge pool
Speaker 2: of people who qualify who are living near those court rooms.
Speaker 2: Sixty two percent of the people who end up being
Speaker 2: appointed judges there had previously served as staff attorneys for
Speaker 2: the Department of Homeland Security. In other words, they were prosecutors.
Speaker 2: And if you look at the judges overall, you know
Speaker 2: there are those judges who deny almost all cases. You
Speaker 2: can find other judges and other jurisdictions, for example, in
Speaker 2: San Francisco, who deny only say twenty percent of the cases.
Speaker 2: Critics of the immigration court system say that the variances
Speaker 2: between judges are so extreme that that ends up becoming
Speaker 2: the most important part of a case. It's not the
Speaker 2: merits of the case, it's actually the luck of the draw.
Speaker 1: And you Rendez Valdez, he got a series of bad
Speaker 1: draws when he was detained, when he was sent to
Speaker 1: Louisiana to await trial, and when he was sent back
Speaker 1: to Cuba where he was put in prison.
Speaker 2: When he was released in twenty twenty two. At this time,
Speaker 2: he began sort of documenting abuses that he would see
Speaker 2: by the Cuban government.
Speaker 1: He made videos about his own experiences. He introduces himself
Speaker 1: as a human rights activist. He also recorded protests in
Speaker 1: videos of what he saw as examples of government failures,
Speaker 1: like this one after Hurricane Ian decimated western Cuba in
Speaker 1: late September twenty twenty two, meaning it's you see him
Speaker 1: walking through the wreckage, pointing out damage and asking residents
Speaker 1: if they're getting the help they need.
Speaker 2: And he sent those videos to video bloggers in the
Speaker 2: United States, anti Cuban bloggers who had programs on YouTube
Speaker 2: and that sort of thing out of Miami, and he
Speaker 2: became something of like a citizen journalist correspondent trying to
Speaker 2: detail abuses in the Cuban regime.
Speaker 1: And Valdez decided he would try again to leave Cuba.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, he boarded a raft made out
Speaker 1: of a car frame and kept a float by plastic containers,
Speaker 1: and he floated for two days across the Caribbean before
Speaker 1: he came ashore on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. He worked odd
Speaker 1: jobs there for eight months before he once again made
Speaker 1: his way through Mexico to its border with the US.
Speaker 2: And the way it works is you generally pay coyotes
Speaker 2: to help you across the border. He did that, and
Speaker 2: this time they didn't cross at a bridge like he
Speaker 2: did the last time. This time they crossed in Ranchland
Speaker 2: in Arizona. He was picked up by the border patrol
Speaker 2: and now for a second time, he entered the asylum system.
Speaker 1: Valdez was in a different state, the US had a
Speaker 1: different president, and the process had changed. Border patrol gave
Speaker 1: him a new form to fill out, one called an
Speaker 1: I two twenty A.
Speaker 2: What it meant for val Days at the time was
Speaker 2: that he was allowed to go and live with his father.
Speaker 2: So he joined his father in Missouri in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: and he's there now and he's awaiting his first court
Speaker 2: hearing in the immigration courts, which will happen in Missouri,
Speaker 2: not in Louisiana. This time.
Speaker 1: That hearing is scheduled for January of twenty twenty six,
Speaker 1: and Monte says Valdez is more optimistic by this time.
Speaker 1: He's going to go before another judge, and he has
Speaker 1: a cell phone full of videos to support his case.
Speaker 1: But the odds are not in his favor in the
Speaker 1: Missouri court where his hearing will take place. The denial
Speaker 1: rate for asylum seekers is seventy six percent. This is
Speaker 1: the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura. This
Speaker 1: episode was produced by David Fox. It was mixed by
Speaker 1: Blake Maples. It was fact checked by Adriana Tapia and
Speaker 1: Alex Sagura. Our executive producer is Nicole beemster Boor, who
Speaker 1: also edited this episode. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's head of podcasts.
Speaker 1: If you liked this episode, make sure to subscribe and
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Speaker 1: back tomorrow.