Executive Director Message

Hello wonderful CASP supporters,

There have been a lot of changes in the past few months, some good, some terrible that have impacted our community  and the immigrants we support.

In July, the U.S. Senate and congress passed the massive budget reconciliation bill, HR-1 OBBA, that makes substantive changes to U.S policy. The bill dramatically increased  federal spending on detention, deportation, and boarder barriers. It also contains immigration provisions that significantly impact asylum seekers by imposing unprecedented fees, expanding detention, restricting federal benefits and reinstating restrictive border policies.

As a vulnerable immigrant population, asylum seekers have always experienced barriers to protection, resources, and legal rights. Unfortunately, their access has been further restricted under the current administration. CASP is currently building contingency plans and emergency funding strategies to ensure we can continue to support our clients as much as we can. Asylum seekers are now experiencing:

• New exorbitant legal fees and historic, nonwaivable fines on asylum access: including an annual fee for each calendar year as asylum application is pending and a fine on access to work permits. It also includes dramatically increased fees for seeking appeals or reviews of negative decisions, ensuring that man people will be "priced out" of seeking review of erroneous denials.
• Resource scarcity: Recent legislation will restrict eligibility for SNAP food benefits and Medicaid. Although asylum seekers are not eligible for man federal government programs, other immigrants with legal status, such as refugees and people who have been granted asylum are now ineligible, causing an increase in the number of people needing assistance from community resources, such as food pantries.
• Increased risk of detention: The Department of Homeland Security has also changed its policy so that asylum seekers who enter the U.S. between official border entry locations (without inspection) are no longer eligible to receive bond and must remain in ICE custody while their asylum case is pending. This means that many of our asylum seekers, if they were detained by ICE, would not be released to CASP and would remain in detention while their asylum case is pending.