Excerpt: "The case of Jayne Alves Vilas Novas offers a window into one of
the darkest corners of the Obama administration's immigration legacy - the
formalization of practices allowing for the indefinite detention of mothers
and children seeking safe haven, practices that will soon be overseen by a
man on a mission to deport millions."
Immigration detention center. (photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman/Redux)
Your Fears Are Not Credible: A Mother and Child Trapped in Obama's Brutal
Family Deportation System
By Ryan Devereaux and Helena Borges, The Intercept
14 December 16
A Mother and Child Trapped in Obamas Brutal Family Deportation System
On the night of November 7, Jayne Alves Vilas Novas, a 19-year-old from
Brazil, tucked her 2-year-old daughter in for bed at the Berks County
Residential Center in Pennsylvania. Outside the walls of the redbrick
building used to house undocumented immigrants, most of them women and
children seeking asylum, the nations attention was consumed by the coming
presidential election. Vilas Novass mind was elsewhere, though.
Vilas Novas was thinking about the tumultuous series of events that brought
her to the U.S., about the man who turned her life into a waking nightmare,
and about the deportation she and her daughter narrowly avoided weeks
earlier. She was consumed with dread over the possibility that the American
officials might try it again, pulling the two of them out of bed in the
middle of the night then shipping them back home. Weeping, Vilas Novas
walked into her bathroom, pulled out a razor from a pencil sharpener, and
pressed it to her wrist.
Vilas Novas was frantic when she re-emerged. Her roommate was still awake
and managed to talk her down. The cuts were superficial Vilas Novas washed
and bandaged them on her own but the motivations that had driven her over
the edge remained.
It had been nearly 10 weeks since Vilas Novas and her daughter showed up at
the U.S. border, hoping for a safer life with family in New England. After
U.S. officials determined her fears of persecution in Brazil were not
credible, Vilas Novas and her daughter were shipped to Pennsylvania, where
the young mothers hopes began to dim.
The pair had been swept into a deportation machine that over the last few
years has shuttled thousands of families back to the places they fear most.
Vilas Novas had never been in prison before, she later said, and she
couldnt bring herself to adjust to her new reality. Her daughter began
acting out, biting at the skin around her fingernails until she bled. Vilas
Novas could sense the bond between them fraying under the stress.
When she met with the facilitys contracted psychologist the morning after
the cutting, Vilas Novas was torn over how to explain what she was feeling,
afraid the wrong words could provide a pretext for taking her daughter away.
Struggling through a telephonic interpreter none of the staff at Berks
speaks Portuguese Vilas Novas did what she could to convey a simple
message: I cant bear it anymore.
A week and a half later, Vilas Novas described her ordeal to The Intercept
in her native language. Relatives corroborated much of her account in
interviews from Brazil and Massachusetts, while the small team of overworked
legal advocates fighting on her behalf provided dozens of pages of sworn
declarations, legal briefs, and Brazilian police records offered to U.S.
officials as proof of the trauma and threats Vilas Novas and her daughter
face at home.
Together, the documents and conversations reflect the desperate measures
Vilas Novas took to keep her daughter safe, highlighting the complex
intersections of mental health and trauma coursing through the nations
asylum bureaucracies, and offering a window into one of the darkest corners
of the Obama administrations immigration legacy the formalization of
practices allowing for the indefinite detention of mothers and children
seeking safe haven, practices that will soon be overseen by a man on a
mission to deport millions.
Vilas Novas and her daughter arrived at the Gateway International port of
entry in Brownsville, Texas, on August 31 the culmination of a journey
that had taken the pair from rural Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, by plane to
Mexico City, then finally by bus to the U.S. border. By the time Vilas Novas
presented herself to Border Patrol agents in Brownsville, the loan her aunt
had given her had been whittled down to $271.
Given an aluminum sheet to sleep with, Vilas Novas said she and her daughter
spent their first two nights in the U.S. in a frigid, kennel-like room
crowded with other immigrant families. It seemed like they put the air
conditioning on the coldest setting, she recalled Customs and Border
Protections use of so-called iceboxes in immigrant detention centers has
been documented before. There was no bed for us to lie down on, just a thin
cushion thrown on the ground as if I were a dog.
The following day, CBP officials questioned Vilas Novas and determined that
she and her daughter were inadmissible to the United States. The two were
issued expedited removal orders and the next day were transferred to the
nations largest immigrant family detention center, the South Texas Family
Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
Run by the countrys largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation
of America, now going by the name CoreCivic, the Dilley center was opened by
the Department of Homeland Security in December 2014 as part of an Obama
administration effort to deter a tide of migrants, many of them families and
unaccompanied children, fleeing violence in Central America for the southern
border of the U.S. Somewhere between a prison and a refugee camp, Dilley has
a 2,400-bed capacity and, as of August 2016, housed more than 1,300
immigrant women and children.
Despite years of bad press, evidence of abuse, and accusations that it
profits off the suffering of some of the worlds most vulnerable
populations, Dilley nevertheless represented an opportunity for Vilas Novas
to tell her story again, this time in hopes of securing an asylum hearing
before a judge, something she had indicated that she was not seeking during
her original CBP interview.
The first step in the process was a so-called credible fear interview. CFIs
are a crucial initial screening phase in which noncitizens slated for an
expedited removal can make the case that they have a legitimate fear of
being deported back to their home country. If an asylum officer determines
that the fear could indeed be credible, then the deportation process is
effectively paused and the individual has a chance of making their full
asylum case to a judge.
Vilas Novass interview lasted just over an hour and a half. Unlike in her
CBP interview, she managed to convey at least some of what life was like for
her in Brazil. She explained that she had fled the country because she was
afraid of five men who had beaten her and her husband with rocks, resulting
in serious injuries. We filed a report and nothing happened, Vilas Novas
said. We had to get a lawyer, but there is no Brazilian justice, and then
[my] husband left me. With her husband gone, and with little hope in the
Brazilian justice system, Vilas Novas said she believed the physical danger
she and her daughter were in had increased substantially. This guy does
everything he wants there, she told the official, referring to the man who
led the attack. He fights. He threatens people. He also uses drugs. They
never got him for anything.
Vilas Novas was asked if she had any other fears of returning to Brazil,
other than the man who led the assault on her and her partner. No, thats
the only reason, she said. If I go back, that this guy would do something
to me or my daughter. She told the official that she didnt describe these
fears before because I was afraid they would contact Brazilian people and
the guy would know and he would do something to me and my daughter.
The asylum official determined Vilas Novass fears were not credible. Later
that day, the judge reviewing her interview agreed. Vilas Novas described
the moment he rendered his decision. I started to cry and he said: I do
not doubt that your story is true, but I agree with the official. And the
response is no. You will be deported. With that, Vilas Novas and her
daughter were advised that they would be transferred to a small family
detention facility in Pennsylvania, where they would await deportation back
to Brazil.
Vilas Novass experience in Texas was hardly unique, but the system hasnt
always been this harsh and unforgiving for mothers and children. When
families and unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America began
showing up on the southwest border by the tens of thousands in the summer of
2014, the Obama administration responded by building an infrastructure for
handling them that emphasized large-scale detention and rapid deportation.
The move was a significant departure from past practices. In years prior,
families were rarely slated for expedited removal, nor were they subject to
mandatory detention. In court, the government has defended its post-2014
practices spearheaded by DHS and its immigration enforcement wing, ICE
on national security grounds, while journalists, human rights organizations,
and attorneys have roundly criticized them as inhumane and an affront to due
process.
ICE currently maintains three family detention centers that as of August
held just over 2,000 women and children. In addition to the Dilley facility,
Texas is also home to the Karnes County Residential Center, in Karnes City,
operated by the GEO Group, a private prison company. The third and oldest
family detention center the only one that existed before the summer of
2014 is the Berks facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania, where Vilas Novas
and her daughter are currently being held.
Converted from a nursing home in March 2001, the county-owned Berks facility
is the smallest of the governments family detention centers, with a 96-bed
capacity, and has been the subject of intense criticism. In an August 2015
report, Human Rights First documented impacts on the health and well-being
of children housed at the facility including depression, anxiety, and
increased aggression and obstacles to release such as unaffordable
bonds, delays in interview processes, and/or lack of counsel.
Berks garnered national attention earlier this year when 22 women held there
announced they were going on hunger strike. The impetus for the strike were
comments from DHS chief Jeh Johnson, who said the average stay in family
detention was 20 days the hunger strikers included mothers with children
at the facility who had been held for nearly a year, many of them asylum
seekers who said their credible fear interviews had been conducted
improperly.
Carol Anne Donohoe, a Pennsylvania immigration attorney and former president
of the Greater Reading Immigration Project, was one of the lawyers for the
so-called Berks Mothers. Over the last two years, Donohoe and her colleagues
Jacquelyn Kline and Bridget Cambria have had an up-close experience of the
dramatic changes at Berks and in family detention nationally. Donohoe
recalls first visiting Berks as part of a bar association tour in April
2014.
I had never been in that particular facility, she said. I never had to go
over to Berks because people were held there for just a very brief span of
time while they either finished their paperwork or got a sponsor. Donohoe
recalls about 17 people being held at the center during her initial visit. A
little over a year later, multiple detention centers had opened up across
the country and the numbers of women and children held in them, often after
presenting themselves to immigration authorities in hopes of gaining asylum,
were swelling into the thousands during one recent seventh-month stretch,
the number of individuals who passed through the nations family detention
centers was well over 18,000.
For Donohoe and her team, the influx has been staggering. For the first
year and a half, two years, we were the only ones who really represented
anyone at Berks, she said. Whats more, she said, There have been constant
policy shifts since the summer of 2014. Each shift, including some stemming
from major court decisions rejecting core elements of the governments
family detention practices, has impacted legal work at Berks in its own way.
For the first year, the reason for the prolonged detention was supposedly
deterrence, trying to keep these families send a message to other
families: Dont come because if you do, youre going to be deported, youre
not going to win your case, Donohoe explained. So that was what we dealt
with.
The next summer, a federal judge in the Central District of California
determined that the Obama administrations family detention practices
violated a longstanding court settlement, part of a case known as Flores v.
Meese, by ruling that protections long guaranteed to unaccompanied minors
also apply to immigrant children accompanied by their parents. As part of
the ruling, the government was ordered to release those families held in
unlicensed and secure facilities such as the private detention centers
in Texas as quickly as possible.
In late October 2015, new transfers who could no longer be held in the Texas
facilities as a result of the decision started showing up at Berks. Donohoe
and her colleagues noticed patterns among the new arrivals. Up until a year
ago, we got people right from the border, she said. We didnt get all
these people who were being transferred from Texas. In the past, the Newark
Asylum Office would typically conduct incoming asylum seekers initial CFI,
Donohoe explained.
The Newark Asylum Office is good, she said. They know how to question
someone. They know how to actually elicit the responses that might go
towards a claim. Not all of them, but for the most part, they try.
Donohoe pointed out that when an asylum official gives a CFI the green
light, its not the same as granting the individual asylum its a
threshold determination, she said, meaning a determination that an
individual could have a viable asylum claim and should get the opportunity
to appear before a judge. Under the law, an asylum claim can be based on
persons persecution or well-founded fear of persecution as a result of
their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group,
or political opinion, or their well-founded fears of being tortured if
returned home. In the past, Donohoe said, people almost always passed their
CFI.
Until we started getting these transfers, we didnt have problems with
people passing CFIs, she said. We didnt have to do these requests for
re-interviews. I think there were maybe one or two where I ever had to say,
Hey, can you look at this again?
With the shift in policy, and with the Obama administrations ongoing
emphasis on detention and deportation, the situation for the legal advocates
at Berks has changed dramatically over the last year, Donohoe explained,
The process has become so prohibitive, she said. I look at the CFIs out
of Houston and theyre terrible. Its not geared towards what its supposed
to be being a safety net to make sure people arent deported who might
have a claim.
For the legal team at Berks, the shift in how asylum cases are processed has
meant devoting more time to seeking new credible fear interviews for those
passing through the facility.
Last summer, Donohoe and her colleagues hired two legal advocates to help
them with their tremendous workload, including Karen Hoffmann, a former
journalist who had reported from Brazil and spoke Portuguese. When Vilas
Novas arrived at Berks on September 19, Donohoe quickly took her case while
Hoffmann began having conversations with the young mother about her life in
Brazil.
Immigration lawyers in Texas who collaborate with the attorneys in
Pennsylvania had already put in a request for Vilas Novas to be
re-interviewed. The legal team at Berks picked up where they left off,
obtaining a Brazilian police report and medical records that confirmed the
violent incident Vilas Novas had described in her initial CBP interview
though it occurred months earlier than Vilas Novas originally recalled.
Photos from the medical records showed Vilas Novas with a wide cut over the
bridge of her nose and her partner with a crooked gash stretching up from
his forehead to well behind his hairline. The police report, meanwhile,
confirmed the couples attackers were arrested and released on the same day
and added that the men threatened the military police unit that responded to
the scene, telling them they were going to drink their blood. Vilas Novas
explained that the men behind the attack were known drug traffickers who
operated with impunity local press reports indicate that drug traffickers
and criminal groups in the area where Vilas Novas lived have at times
rivaled law enforcement.
It wasnt just a barroom brawl, it was a narcotrafficker, Donohoe said.
Someone who the government cant control.
Conversations with Hoffmann also revealed something Vilas Novas described in
conversations with immigration attorneys in Texas but had not discussed in
her initial credible fear interview: years of domestic abuse and stalking by
a former partner. Vilas Novas explained how, at the age of 14, she met a man
who was roughly a decade older who became her boyfriend. Shortly after they
started dating, she said, the man began beating her regularly, once stabbing
her in the leg in a fit of jealousy. Though she left him after six months,
Vilas Novas said the man maintained an ongoing and threatening presence in
her life. When the father of her daughter left her, Vilas Novas said her ex
made it known around their small town that he wanted her back.
Asylum seekers lack of disclosure on domestic violence is something Donohoe
and her team come up against often. Many women, advocates point out,
including Vilas Novas, arrive in the U.S. without knowing that the
persecuted social group referenced in their CFIs can include women, and as
a result dont identify as members of that population in screening
interviews. Whats more, mothers are sometimes required to have their
children present during the interview, making candid disclosures to a
stranger about deeply personal domestic trauma all the more difficult.
Mothers dont know how to answer, Donohoe said. They dont know how they
have to say everything that ever happened to them since birth.
In what they viewed as a sign of how arbitrary the immigration process can
be, Hoffman and the legal team also discovered that Vilas Novass brother
had successfully entered the U.S. after her.
One of the reasons I left Brazil was that one neighbor threatened my life,
Geraldo Vilas Novas told The Intercept. The other was this problem with my
sisters ex-boyfriend. He [had] chased my sister, beaten my father I
wasnt going to wait for my time. But I didnt mention this in the
immigration office interview, I just spoke about the problem with my
neighbor. They didnt ask me anything about my sister, so I didnt mention
her.
On October 5, Vilas Novas filed two complaints with Berks, one requesting a
Portuguese translator, the other requesting a room change Vilas Novas said
her roommates daughter was routinely hitting her daughter. Instead of
support, she and her attorneys believe her complaints made her a target.
I was accused of child abuse two times, Vilas Novas said. The first time
they accused me because I picked my daughter up by the arm. Ever since she
was little, I have always had the habit of picking her up by the arms, but
without meaning to, I dislocated her arm and was accused of child abuse.
The second accusation, Vilas Novas said, was entirely fabricated. Her legal
advocates say the accusations resulted in Vilas Novas being placed under
24-hour surveillance until she agreed to take a Berks-administrated
parenting course a Pennsylvania Department of Human Services investigation
later determined both accusations were unfounded.
On October 12, a week after Vilas Novas filed her complaints, Donohoe and
the legal team submitted a formal request for a stay on her and her
daughters deportation, citing threats from a narcotrafficking
organization and more importantly, violence at the hands of [Vilas
Novass] former partner who brutalized her since the age of 14. Bridget
Cambria, Donohoes legal partner, wrote, We are currently scheduling a
volunteer psychologist to come and speak with Jayne in order for us to
prepare a comprehensive request for re-interview.
In her official declaration to DHS, attached to the stay of removal request,
Vilas Novas offered a multi-paragraph account of the incident with the
alleged drug traffickers and the intimidation that followed. Over the course
of several more pages, she gave detailed descriptions of the physical and
sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her ex, whom she also named,
and laid out the specific reasons why she still fears him. She explained why
she hadnt raised the issue of the domestic abuse in her original credible
fear interview because the asylum officer had advised her to keep her
answers short and because she was afraid that there would be a permanent
record in the United States government and that he would find out and she
asked to be heard again.
There is nowhere in Brazil where my daughter and I could live safely, she
said.
ICE denied the request the following day.
With the denial in place, ICE moved to deport Vilas Novas and her daughter
as quickly as possible. Donohoes team countered by fast-tracking a formal
complaint to DHSs Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that they had
already been drafting. Cambria, Donohoes colleague, filed the complaint
that afternoon. Outlining what Vilas Novas and her daughter had gone
through, including mental health issues and extremely frustrating language
issues, Donohoe wrote that this case has every facet of violations of
civil rights in family detention and argued that their ordeal reflected a
broader problem with the family detention system.
For some reason the Asylum Office has begun a pattern of not understanding
that domestic violence victims do not immediately disclose interfamilial
violence to strangers, and in cases of extreme violence and extreme youth,
this is more often than not the case, she wrote.
In Vilas Novass case in particular, Donohoe presented two core issues that
she considered troubling. The first stemmed from Vilas Novas spending nearly
a month and a half unable to fully communicate with any of the staff
detaining her and her daughter. She filed a language access complaint with
Berks and rather than being handled in a professional way, Jayne understood
that if she continued to be a problem they would remove her or take her
daughter, a threat which unfortunately we hear often, Donohoe wrote. Now a
mere eight days later (coincidentally the normal time it would take ICE to
purchase a ticket), she has been taken from Berks.
The second issue Donohoe identified had to do with ICEs claim that Vilas
Novass attorneys had sufficient time to settle her case. ICE states that
we had 41 days for her to be evaluated, the length of detention, she wrote.
However during that time she has been engaged in a CFI process that absorbs
time. Then she endures a transfer from Texas to Berks. Texas where she had
pro bono counsel working on her case. Now sent thousands of miles away to
Berks where we, as local pro bono counsel, have to scramble.
Donohoe, whose legal team currently represents around 40 women at Berks,
explained that she and her colleagues receive no notification when a new
person or family arrives at the facility. We rely on word of mouth, she
wrote. Once we learned that Jayne was here we immediately began working on
her case, however we have had a little over two weeks time to finish
everything, including coordinating everything between TX and PA.
It is absolutely a winning case, Donohoe wrote. And the terrifying part
of this all, is it may be a bed or a # for ICE, but to Jayne and her child,
its the difference between being safe and being terrorized or killed.
I actually physically fear for them, she added.
Vilas Novas and her daughter were at the airport, their bags already loaded
onto a plane bound for Brazil, when their deportation was halted. The last
ditch effort worked, with DHS civil liberties officials informing Donohoes
team that they would look into the case.
Despite the break, Vilas Novass outlook grew increasingly dark in the weeks
that followed.
As her case was wending its way through the immigration bureaucracy, Vilas
Novas learned that her ex had confronted her father back home in Brazil he
had asked about her, and when her father refused to answer, her ex grabbed a
horse whip and lashed him in the street. In an interview with The Intercept,
a person close to the family, who requested not to be named for fear of
retaliation, confirmed that the assault happened. The attack, Vilas Novas
said in one of her declarations, was on her mind on the night she cut
herself.
I started crying, she said. This is someone who has made me suffer since
I was 14 years old. I had to leave my country because of fear of him.
All
of this ran through my head and left me feeling like I wanted to die.
On November 23, the day before Thanksgiving, Vilas Novass second request to
be re-interviewed was denied.
What happens next in the case remains to be seen. The Brazilian consulate
initially told The Intercept it was unaware of the detention of Vilas Novas
and her daughter. After confirming they were indeed being held, the
consulate said in a statement, The deportation of both of them should be
suspended by the American authorities.
ICE declined to address any of the specifics in Vilas Novass case. When
asked whether it had looked into her allegations that she had been the
subject of retaliation for her complaints at Berks, the agency said in a
statement that it remains committed to providing a safe and humane
environment for all those housed by the agency. ICE does not retaliate in
any way against individuals who file grievances against facility conditions
or staff. Consistent with agency policy, Berks residents are afforded the
opportunity to privately express any concerns they have with the facilities.
These filings often undergo many levels of agency scrutiny to ensure
residents concerns are quickly and adequately addressed.
On the issue of Vilas Novass attempts to secure a new interview, ICE
directed questions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the
Executive Office for Immigration Review. The former said it could not
comment on decisions in individual cases; the latter did not respond. Berks
did not respond to a request for comment.
With family in Massachusetts offering to take responsibility for Vilas Novas
and her daughter, including an uncle who is a U.S. citizen and an aunt who
is a lawful permanent resident, the pair could be safely released as the
case continues, Donohoe and her team argue.
For now, the open DHS civil rights investigation is preventing ICE from
deporting Vilas Novas and her daughter. When that will conclude, however, is
unclear. According to Hoffmann, the young mother hasnt taken the news well
and doesnt know how much longer she can hold out.
All of the lawyers whove worked on Jaynes case, the lawyers here and the
lawyers back in Texas, have said this is one of the strongest cases theyve
seen and they cant understand how her RFRs [requests for review] keep
getting denied she has so much documented abuse, documented threats,
Hoffmann said. The good thing in her case right now is that she does have
this stay because of the ongoing investigation by the Office of Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties, so shes protected, but the problem is shes so
miserable in detention, she said. Staying there is better than going back
to Brazil, but its really bad.
The pushback against the Obama administrations family detention apparatus
has been substantial and has gotten some results.
In January, Pennsylvanias Department of Human Services announced that it
would not renew Berkss license to operate as a child residential facility
because the facility was operating as a residential center for the
detention of immigrant families, including adults, rather than its approved
purpose. The facility has been permitted to continue operating while it
appeals that decision. In September, DHS released the results of a specially
appointed committees year-and-a-half-long review of the governments family
detention practices. The first recommendation of the 158-page report,
highlighted in red, was that the detention of families needs to stop.
Earlier this month, hundreds of women and children were released from the
for-profit detention centers in Texas after a judge ruled that the licensing
for the facilities contravenes Texas Human Resources Code
and runs
counter to the general objectives of the Texas Human Resources Code
meaning all three of the nations immigrant family detention centers are
currently operating without licenses.
And yet for all of the progress thats been made, immigration advocates are
profoundly worried about what the future might hold. Donohoe, the
Pennsylvania immigration attorney, met with senior officials from DHS when
the committees findings on family detention were released. Sarah Saldaña,
the director of ICE, was also present. According to Donohoe, Saldañas
message was that family detention is here to stay. Its an immensely
frustrating argument for immigration attorneys who have spent the last two
years pointing out that family detention, in its present form, didnt exist
before 2014.
Its not a law, Donohoe said. There is no law that mandates family
detention. Still, Donohoe said the ICE directors position was clear. She
said, Its for the next administration to deal with the report.
Im sure she didnt know or think that the next administration would be
Donald Trump, Donohoe said.
Rising to power on a platform of anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump has vowed to
deport anywhere from 2 to 11 million undocumented immigrants and implement
the most aggressive enforcement of immigration laws possible. The
president-elect has also promised a federal hiring freeze that advocates say
would bring the nations already disastrously overburdened immigration
courts to a grinding halt, resulting in more people held in detention. Aside
from his infamously hardline positions on Syrian refugees, Trump has been
characteristically vague on what exactly he would do with people who come to
the U.S. fleeing danger in their home countries, though on the campaign
trail, he at one point called for an increase in standards for the
admission of refugees and asylum seekers to crack down on abuses, and his
talk has consistently reflected a vision of zero tolerance for anyone who
comes to the U.S. without papers. All of this, attorneys worry, points to a
world in which the very worst elements of the Obama administrations
immigration legacy are taken to new levels and the problems inherent in the
current family detention apparatus become further entrenched.
Thats the whole thing, Donohoe said. For the past year everybody has
been saying, Oh, god, what would Trump do to immigrants? What would Trump
do? Its like, if you care about what Trump would do to immigrants, Obama
is paving the way.
He has paved the way for everything that Donald Trump says he is going to
do, she said. Its his Department of Justice that argued that kids in
family detention arent covered under Flores. Its his Department of Justice
that is arguing that these habeas moms dont deserve a day in court.
I say if you are afraid of Donald Trump, then you tell Obama, Donohoe
said. This is all Obama. He can end it. He can shut it down.
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Immigration detention center. (photo: Ilana Panich-Linsman/Redux)
https://theintercept.com/2016/12/13/a-mother-and-child-trapped-in-obamas-bru
tal-family-deportation-system/https://theintercept.com/2016/12/13/a-mother-a
nd-child-trapped-in-obamas-brutal-family-deportation-system/
Your Fears Are Not Credible: A Mother and Child Trapped in Obama's Brutal
Family Deportation System
By Ryan Devereaux and Helena Borges, The Intercept
14 December 16
A Mother and Child Trapped in Obamas Brutal Family Deportation System
n the night of November 7, Jayne Alves Vilas Novas, a 19-year-old from
Brazil, tucked her 2-year-old daughter in for bed at the Berks County
Residential Center in Pennsylvania. Outside the walls of the redbrick
building used to house undocumented immigrants, most of them women and
children seeking asylum, the nations attention was consumed by the coming
presidential election. Vilas Novass mind was elsewhere, though.
Vilas Novas was thinking about the tumultuous series of events that brought
her to the U.S., about the man who turned her life into a waking nightmare,
and about the deportation she and her daughter narrowly avoided weeks
earlier. She was consumed with dread over the possibility that the American
officials might try it again, pulling the two of them out of bed in the
middle of the night then shipping them back home. Weeping, Vilas Novas
walked into her bathroom, pulled out a razor from a pencil sharpener, and
pressed it to her wrist.
Vilas Novas was frantic when she re-emerged. Her roommate was still awake
and managed to talk her down. The cuts were superficial Vilas Novas washed
and bandaged them on her own but the motivations that had driven her over
the edge remained.
It had been nearly 10 weeks since Vilas Novas and her daughter showed up at
the U.S. border, hoping for a safer life with family in New England. After
U.S. officials determined her fears of persecution in Brazil were not
credible, Vilas Novas and her daughter were shipped to Pennsylvania, where
the young mothers hopes began to dim.
The pair had been swept into a deportation machine that over the last few
years has shuttled thousands of families back to the places they fear most.
Vilas Novas had never been in prison before, she later said, and she
couldnt bring herself to adjust to her new reality. Her daughter began
acting out, biting at the skin around her fingernails until she bled. Vilas
Novas could sense the bond between them fraying under the stress.
When she met with the facilitys contracted psychologist the morning after
the cutting, Vilas Novas was torn over how to explain what she was feeling,
afraid the wrong words could provide a pretext for taking her daughter away.
Struggling through a telephonic interpreter none of the staff at Berks
speaks Portuguese Vilas Novas did what she could to convey a simple
message: I cant bear it anymore.
A week and a half later, Vilas Novas described her ordeal to The Intercept
in her native language. Relatives corroborated much of her account in
interviews from Brazil and Massachusetts, while the small team of overworked
legal advocates fighting on her behalf provided dozens of pages of sworn
declarations, legal briefs, and Brazilian police records offered to U.S.
officials as proof of the trauma and threats Vilas Novas and her daughter
face at home.
Together, the documents and conversations reflect the desperate measures
Vilas Novas took to keep her daughter safe, highlighting the complex
intersections of mental health and trauma coursing through the nations
asylum bureaucracies, and offering a window into one of the darkest corners
of the Obama administrations immigration legacy the formalization of
practices allowing for the indefinite detention of mothers and children
seeking safe haven, practices that will soon be overseen by a man on a
mission to deport millions.
Vilas Novas and her daughter arrived at the Gateway International port of
entry in Brownsville, Texas, on August 31 the culmination of a journey
that had taken the pair from rural Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, by plane to
Mexico City, then finally by bus to the U.S. border. By the time Vilas Novas
presented herself to Border Patrol agents in Brownsville, the loan her aunt
had given her had been whittled down to $271.
Given an aluminum sheet to sleep with, Vilas Novas said she and her daughter
spent their first two nights in the U.S. in a frigid, kennel-like room
crowded with other immigrant families. It seemed like they put the air
conditioning on the coldest setting, she recalled Customs and Border
Protections use of so-called iceboxes in immigrant detention centers has
been documented before. There was no bed for us to lie down on, just a thin
cushion thrown on the ground as if I were a dog.
The following day, CBP officials questioned Vilas Novas and determined that
she and her daughter were inadmissible to the United States. The two were
issued expedited removal orders and the next day were transferred to the
nations largest immigrant family detention center, the South Texas Family
Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
Run by the countrys largest private prison company, Corrections Corporation
of America, now going by the name CoreCivic, the Dilley center was opened by
the Department of Homeland Security in December 2014 as part of an Obama
administration effort to deter a tide of migrants, many of them families and
unaccompanied children, fleeing violence in Central America for the southern
border of the U.S. Somewhere between a prison and a refugee camp, Dilley has
a 2,400-bed capacity and, as of August 2016, housed more than 1,300
immigrant women and children.
Despite years of bad press, evidence of abuse, and accusations that it
profits off the suffering of some of the worlds most vulnerable
populations, Dilley nevertheless represented an opportunity for Vilas Novas
to tell her story again, this time in hopes of securing an asylum hearing
before a judge, something she had indicated that she was not seeking during
her original CBP interview.
The first step in the process was a so-called credible fear interview. CFIs
are a crucial initial screening phase in which noncitizens slated for an
expedited removal can make the case that they have a legitimate fear of
being deported back to their home country. If an asylum officer determines
that the fear could indeed be credible, then the deportation process is
effectively paused and the individual has a chance of making their full
asylum case to a judge.
Vilas Novass interview lasted just over an hour and a half. Unlike in her
CBP interview, she managed to convey at least some of what life was like for
her in Brazil. She explained that she had fled the country because she was
afraid of five men who had beaten her and her husband with rocks, resulting
in serious injuries. We filed a report and nothing happened, Vilas Novas
said. We had to get a lawyer, but there is no Brazilian justice, and then
[my] husband left me. With her husband gone, and with little hope in the
Brazilian justice system, Vilas Novas said she believed the physical danger
she and her daughter were in had increased substantially. This guy does
everything he wants there, she told the official, referring to the man who
led the attack. He fights. He threatens people. He also uses drugs. They
never got him for anything.
Vilas Novas was asked if she had any other fears of returning to Brazil,
other than the man who led the assault on her and her partner. No, thats
the only reason, she said. If I go back, that this guy would do something
to me or my daughter. She told the official that she didnt describe these
fears before because I was afraid they would contact Brazilian people and
the guy would know and he would do something to me and my daughter.
The asylum official determined Vilas Novass fears were not credible. Later
that day, the judge reviewing her interview agreed. Vilas Novas described
the moment he rendered his decision. I started to cry and he said: I do
not doubt that your story is true, but I agree with the official. And the
response is no. You will be deported. With that, Vilas Novas and her
daughter were advised that they would be transferred to a small family
detention facility in Pennsylvania, where they would await deportation back
to Brazil.
Vilas Novass experience in Texas was hardly unique, but the system hasnt
always been this harsh and unforgiving for mothers and children. When
families and unaccompanied minors fleeing violence in Central America began
showing up on the southwest border by the tens of thousands in the summer of
2014, the Obama administration responded by building an infrastructure for
handling them that emphasized large-scale detention and rapid deportation.
The move was a significant departure from past practices. In years prior,
families were rarely slated for expedited removal, nor were they subject to
mandatory detention. In court, the government has defended its post-2014
practices spearheaded by DHS and its immigration enforcement wing, ICE
on national security grounds, while journalists, human rights organizations,
and attorneys have roundly criticized them as inhumane and an affront to due
process.
ICE currently maintains three family detention centers that as of August
held just over 2,000 women and children. In addition to the Dilley facility,
Texas is also home to the Karnes County Residential Center, in Karnes City,
operated by the GEO Group, a private prison company. The third and oldest
family detention center the only one that existed before the summer of
2014 is the Berks facility in Leesport, Pennsylvania, where Vilas Novas
and her daughter are currently being held.
Converted from a nursing home in March 2001, the county-owned Berks facility
is the smallest of the governments family detention centers, with a 96-bed
capacity, and has been the subject of intense criticism. In an August 2015
report, Human Rights First documented impacts on the health and well-being
of children housed at the facility including depression, anxiety, and
increased aggression and obstacles to release such as unaffordable
bonds, delays in interview processes, and/or lack of counsel.
Berks garnered national attention earlier this year when 22 women held there
announced they were going on hunger strike. The impetus for the strike were
comments from DHS chief Jeh Johnson, who said the average stay in family
detention was 20 days the hunger strikers included mothers with children
at the facility who had been held for nearly a year, many of them asylum
seekers who said their credible fear interviews had been conducted
improperly.
Carol Anne Donohoe, a Pennsylvania immigration attorney and former president
of the Greater Reading Immigration Project, was one of the lawyers for the
so-called Berks Mothers. Over the last two years, Donohoe and her colleagues
Jacquelyn Kline and Bridget Cambria have had an up-close experience of the
dramatic changes at Berks and in family detention nationally. Donohoe
recalls first visiting Berks as part of a bar association tour in April
2014.
I had never been in that particular facility, she said. I never had to go
over to Berks because people were held there for just a very brief span of
time while they either finished their paperwork or got a sponsor. Donohoe
recalls about 17 people being held at the center during her initial visit. A
little over a year later, multiple detention centers had opened up across
the country and the numbers of women and children held in them, often after
presenting themselves to immigration authorities in hopes of gaining asylum,
were swelling into the thousands during one recent seventh-month stretch,
the number of individuals who passed through the nations family detention
centers was well over 18,000.
For Donohoe and her team, the influx has been staggering. For the first
year and a half, two years, we were the only ones who really represented
anyone at Berks, she said. Whats more, she said, There have been constant
policy shifts since the summer of 2014. Each shift, including some stemming
from major court decisions rejecting core elements of the governments
family detention practices, has impacted legal work at Berks in its own way.
For the first year, the reason for the prolonged detention was supposedly
deterrence, trying to keep these families send a message to other
families: Dont come because if you do, youre going to be deported, youre
not going to win your case, Donohoe explained. So that was what we dealt
with.
The next summer, a federal judge in the Central District of California
determined that the Obama administrations family detention practices
violated a longstanding court settlement, part of a case known as Flores v.
Meese, by ruling that protections long guaranteed to unaccompanied minors
also apply to immigrant children accompanied by their parents. As part of
the ruling, the government was ordered to release those families held in
unlicensed and secure facilities such as the private detention centers
in Texas as quickly as possible.
In late October 2015, new transfers who could no longer be held in the Texas
facilities as a result of the decision started showing up at Berks. Donohoe
and her colleagues noticed patterns among the new arrivals. Up until a year
ago, we got people right from the border, she said. We didnt get all
these people who were being transferred from Texas. In the past, the Newark
Asylum Office would typically conduct incoming asylum seekers initial CFI,
Donohoe explained.
The Newark Asylum Office is good, she said. They know how to question
someone. They know how to actually elicit the responses that might go
towards a claim. Not all of them, but for the most part, they try.
Donohoe pointed out that when an asylum official gives a CFI the green
light, its not the same as granting the individual asylum its a
threshold determination, she said, meaning a determination that an
individual could have a viable asylum claim and should get the opportunity
to appear before a judge. Under the law, an asylum claim can be based on
persons persecution or well-founded fear of persecution as a result of
their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group,
or political opinion, or their well-founded fears of being tortured if
returned home. In the past, Donohoe said, people almost always passed their
CFI.
Until we started getting these transfers, we didnt have problems with
people passing CFIs, she said. We didnt have to do these requests for
re-interviews. I think there were maybe one or two where I ever had to say,
Hey, can you look at this again?
With the shift in policy, and with the Obama administrations ongoing
emphasis on detention and deportation, the situation for the legal advocates
at Berks has changed dramatically over the last year, Donohoe explained,
The process has become so prohibitive, she said. I look at the CFIs out
of Houston and theyre terrible. Its not geared towards what its supposed
to be being a safety net to make sure people arent deported who might
have a claim.
For the legal team at Berks, the shift in how asylum cases are processed has
meant devoting more time to seeking new credible fear interviews for those
passing through the facility.
Last summer, Donohoe and her colleagues hired two legal advocates to help
them with their tremendous workload, including Karen Hoffmann, a former
journalist who had reported from Brazil and spoke Portuguese. When Vilas
Novas arrived at Berks on September 19, Donohoe quickly took her case while
Hoffmann began having conversations with the young mother about her life in
Brazil.
Immigration lawyers in Texas who collaborate with the attorneys in
Pennsylvania had already put in a request for Vilas Novas to be
re-interviewed. The legal team at Berks picked up where they left off,
obtaining a Brazilian police report and medical records that confirmed the
violent incident Vilas Novas had described in her initial CBP interview
though it occurred months earlier than Vilas Novas originally recalled.
Photos from the medical records showed Vilas Novas with a wide cut over the
bridge of her nose and her partner with a crooked gash stretching up from
his forehead to well behind his hairline. The police report, meanwhile,
confirmed the couples attackers were arrested and released on the same day
and added that the men threatened the military police unit that responded to
the scene, telling them they were going to drink their blood. Vilas Novas
explained that the men behind the attack were known drug traffickers who
operated with impunity local press reports indicate that drug traffickers
and criminal groups in the area where Vilas Novas lived have at times
rivaled law enforcement.
It wasnt just a barroom brawl, it was a narcotrafficker, Donohoe said.
Someone who the government cant control.
Conversations with Hoffmann also revealed something Vilas Novas described in
conversations with immigration attorneys in Texas but had not discussed in
her initial credible fear interview: years of domestic abuse and stalking by
a former partner. Vilas Novas explained how, at the age of 14, she met a man
who was roughly a decade older who became her boyfriend. Shortly after they
started dating, she said, the man began beating her regularly, once stabbing
her in the leg in a fit of jealousy. Though she left him after six months,
Vilas Novas said the man maintained an ongoing and threatening presence in
her life. When the father of her daughter left her, Vilas Novas said her ex
made it known around their small town that he wanted her back.
Asylum seekers lack of disclosure on domestic violence is something Donohoe
and her team come up against often. Many women, advocates point out,
including Vilas Novas, arrive in the U.S. without knowing that the
persecuted social group referenced in their CFIs can include women, and as
a result dont identify as members of that population in screening
interviews. Whats more, mothers are sometimes required to have their
children present during the interview, making candid disclosures to a
stranger about deeply personal domestic trauma all the more difficult.
Mothers dont know how to answer, Donohoe said. They dont know how they
have to say everything that ever happened to them since birth.
In what they viewed as a sign of how arbitrary the immigration process can
be, Hoffman and the legal team also discovered that Vilas Novass brother
had successfully entered the U.S. after her.
One of the reasons I left Brazil was that one neighbor threatened my life,
Geraldo Vilas Novas told The Intercept. The other was this problem with my
sisters ex-boyfriend. He [had] chased my sister, beaten my father I
wasnt going to wait for my time. But I didnt mention this in the
immigration office interview, I just spoke about the problem with my
neighbor. They didnt ask me anything about my sister, so I didnt mention
her.
On October 5, Vilas Novas filed two complaints with Berks, one requesting a
Portuguese translator, the other requesting a room change Vilas Novas said
her roommates daughter was routinely hitting her daughter. Instead of
support, she and her attorneys believe her complaints made her a target.
I was accused of child abuse two times, Vilas Novas said. The first time
they accused me because I picked my daughter up by the arm. Ever since she
was little, I have always had the habit of picking her up by the arms, but
without meaning to, I dislocated her arm and was accused of child abuse.
The second accusation, Vilas Novas said, was entirely fabricated. Her legal
advocates say the accusations resulted in Vilas Novas being placed under
24-hour surveillance until she agreed to take a Berks-administrated
parenting course a Pennsylvania Department of Human Services investigation
later determined both accusations were unfounded.
On October 12, a week after Vilas Novas filed her complaints, Donohoe and
the legal team submitted a formal request for a stay on her and her
daughters deportation, citing threats from a narcotrafficking
organization and more importantly, violence at the hands of [Vilas
Novass] former partner who brutalized her since the age of 14. Bridget
Cambria, Donohoes legal partner, wrote, We are currently scheduling a
volunteer psychologist to come and speak with Jayne in order for us to
prepare a comprehensive request for re-interview.
In her official declaration to DHS, attached to the stay of removal request,
Vilas Novas offered a multi-paragraph account of the incident with the
alleged drug traffickers and the intimidation that followed. Over the course
of several more pages, she gave detailed descriptions of the physical and
sexual abuse she experienced at the hands of her ex, whom she also named,
and laid out the specific reasons why she still fears him. She explained why
she hadnt raised the issue of the domestic abuse in her original credible
fear interview because the asylum officer had advised her to keep her
answers short and because she was afraid that there would be a permanent
record in the United States government and that he would find out and she
asked to be heard again.
There is nowhere in Brazil where my daughter and I could live safely, she
said.
ICE denied the request the following day.
With the denial in place, ICE moved to deport Vilas Novas and her daughter
as quickly as possible. Donohoes team countered by fast-tracking a formal
complaint to DHSs Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties that they had
already been drafting. Cambria, Donohoes colleague, filed the complaint
that afternoon. Outlining what Vilas Novas and her daughter had gone
through, including mental health issues and extremely frustrating language
issues, Donohoe wrote that this case has every facet of violations of
civil rights in family detention and argued that their ordeal reflected a
broader problem with the family detention system.
For some reason the Asylum Office has begun a pattern of not understanding
that domestic violence victims do not immediately disclose interfamilial
violence to strangers, and in cases of extreme violence and extreme youth,
this is more often than not the case, she wrote.
In Vilas Novass case in particular, Donohoe presented two core issues that
she considered troubling. The first stemmed from Vilas Novas spending nearly
a month and a half unable to fully communicate with any of the staff
detaining her and her daughter. She filed a language access complaint with
Berks and rather than being handled in a professional way, Jayne understood
that if she continued to be a problem they would remove her or take her
daughter, a threat which unfortunately we hear often, Donohoe wrote. Now a
mere eight days later (coincidentally the normal time it would take ICE to
purchase a ticket), she has been taken from Berks.
The second issue Donohoe identified had to do with ICEs claim that Vilas
Novass attorneys had sufficient time to settle her case. ICE states that
we had 41 days for her to be evaluated, the length of detention, she wrote.
However during that time she has been engaged in a CFI process that absorbs
time. Then she endures a transfer from Texas to Berks. Texas where she had
pro bono counsel working on her case. Now sent thousands of miles away to
Berks where we, as local pro bono counsel, have to scramble.
Donohoe, whose legal team currently represents around 40 women at Berks,
explained that she and her colleagues receive no notification when a new
person or family arrives at the facility. We rely on word of mouth, she
wrote. Once we learned that Jayne was here we immediately began working on
her case, however we have had a little over two weeks time to finish
everything, including coordinating everything between TX and PA.
It is absolutely a winning case, Donohoe wrote. And the terrifying part
of this all, is it may be a bed or a # for ICE, but to Jayne and her child,
its the difference between being safe and being terrorized or killed.
I actually physically fear for them, she added.
Vilas Novas and her daughter were at the airport, their bags already loaded
onto a plane bound for Brazil, when their deportation was halted. The last
ditch effort worked, with DHS civil liberties officials informing Donohoes
team that they would look into the case.
Despite the break, Vilas Novass outlook grew increasingly dark in the weeks
that followed.
As her case was wending its way through the immigration bureaucracy, Vilas
Novas learned that her ex had confronted her father back home in Brazil he
had asked about her, and when her father refused to answer, her ex grabbed a
horse whip and lashed him in the street. In an interview with The Intercept,
a person close to the family, who requested not to be named for fear of
retaliation, confirmed that the assault happened. The attack, Vilas Novas
said in one of her declarations, was on her mind on the night she cut
herself.
I started crying, she said. This is someone who has made me suffer since
I was 14 years old. I had to leave my country because of fear of him.
All
of this ran through my head and left me feeling like I wanted to die.
On November 23, the day before Thanksgiving, Vilas Novass second request to
be re-interviewed was denied.
What happens next in the case remains to be seen. The Brazilian consulate
initially told The Intercept it was unaware of the detention of Vilas Novas
and her daughter. After confirming they were indeed being held, the
consulate said in a statement, The deportation of both of them should be
suspended by the American authorities.
ICE declined to address any of the specifics in Vilas Novass case. When
asked whether it had looked into her allegations that she had been the
subject of retaliation for her complaints at Berks, the agency said in a
statement that it remains committed to providing a safe and humane
environment for all those housed by the agency. ICE does not retaliate in
any way against individuals who file grievances against facility conditions
or staff. Consistent with agency policy, Berks residents are afforded the
opportunity to privately express any concerns they have with the facilities.
These filings often undergo many levels of agency scrutiny to ensure
residents concerns are quickly and adequately addressed.
On the issue of Vilas Novass attempts to secure a new interview, ICE
directed questions to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the
Executive Office for Immigration Review. The former said it could not
comment on decisions in individual cases; the latter did not respond. Berks
did not respond to a request for comment.
With family in Massachusetts offering to take responsibility for Vilas Novas
and her daughter, including an uncle who is a U.S. citizen and an aunt who
is a lawful permanent resident, the pair could be safely released as the
case continues, Donohoe and her team argue.
For now, the open DHS civil rights investigation is preventing ICE from
deporting Vilas Novas and her daughter. When that will conclude, however, is
unclear. According to Hoffmann, the young mother hasnt taken the news well
and doesnt know how much longer she can hold out.
All of the lawyers whove worked on Jaynes case, the lawyers here and the
lawyers back in Texas, have said this is one of the strongest cases theyve
seen and they cant understand how her RFRs [requests for review] keep
getting denied she has so much documented abuse, documented threats,
Hoffmann said. The good thing in her case right now is that she does have
this stay because of the ongoing investigation by the Office of Civil Rights
and Civil Liberties, so shes protected, but the problem is shes so
miserable in detention, she said. Staying there is better than going back
to Brazil, but its really bad.
The pushback against the Obama administrations family detention apparatus
has been substantial and has gotten some results.
In January, Pennsylvanias Department of Human Services announced that it
would not renew Berkss license to operate as a child residential facility
because the facility was operating as a residential center for the
detention of immigrant families, including adults, rather than its approved
purpose. The facility has been permitted to continue operating while it
appeals that decision. In September, DHS released the results of a specially
appointed committees year-and-a-half-long review of the governments family
detention practices. The first recommendation of the 158-page report,
highlighted in red, was that the detention of families needs to stop.
Earlier this month, hundreds of women and children were released from the
for-profit detention centers in Texas after a judge ruled that the licensing
for the facilities contravenes Texas Human Resources Code
and runs
counter to the general objectives of the Texas Human Resources Code
meaning all three of the nations immigrant family detention centers are
currently operating without licenses.
And yet for all of the progress thats been made, immigration advocates are
profoundly worried about what the future might hold. Donohoe, the
Pennsylvania immigration attorney, met with senior officials from DHS when
the committees findings on family detention were released. Sarah Saldaña,
the director of ICE, was also present. According to Donohoe, Saldañas
message was that family detention is here to stay. Its an immensely
frustrating argument for immigration attorneys who have spent the last two
years pointing out that family detention, in its present form, didnt exist
before 2014.
Its not a law, Donohoe said. There is no law that mandates family
detention. Still, Donohoe said the ICE directors position was clear. She
said, Its for the next administration to deal with the report.
Im sure she didnt know or think that the next administration would be
Donald Trump, Donohoe said.
Rising to power on a platform of anti-immigrant rhetoric, Trump has vowed to
deport anywhere from 2 to 11 million undocumented immigrants and implement
the most aggressive enforcement of immigration laws possible. The
president-elect has also promised a federal hiring freeze that advocates say
would bring the nations already disastrously overburdened immigration
courts to a grinding halt, resulting in more people held in detention. Aside
from his infamously hardline positions on Syrian refugees, Trump has been
characteristically vague on what exactly he would do with people who come to
the U.S. fleeing danger in their home countries, though on the campaign
trail, he at one point called for an increase in standards for the
admission of refugees and asylum seekers to crack down on abuses, and his
talk has consistently reflected a vision of zero tolerance for anyone who
comes to the U.S. without papers. All of this, attorneys worry, points to a
world in which the very worst elements of the Obama administrations
immigration legacy are taken to new levels and the problems inherent in the
current family detention apparatus become further entrenched.
Thats the whole thing, Donohoe said. For the past year everybody has
been saying, Oh, god, what would Trump do to immigrants? What would Trump
do? Its like, if you care about what Trump would do to immigrants, Obama
is paving the way.
He has paved the way for everything that Donald Trump says he is going to
do, she said. Its his Department of Justice that argued that kids in
family detention arent covered under Flores. Its his Department of Justice
that is arguing that these habeas moms dont deserve a day in court.
I say if you are afraid of Donald Trump, then you tell Obama, Donohoe
said. This is all Obama. He can end it. He can shut it down.
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