BUFFALO, N.Y. — Hundreds of asylum seekers already here in Buffalo will now have to wait a lot longer to have their cases heard because of a decision by the White House. According to NBC News, federal workers who handle asylum cases are being transferred to deal with the influx of migrants at the Southern Border.
"The people most impacted by this are the people who have been waiting two or three years to have their case heard, not people who are walking through the door today," said Anna Ireland Mongo, the chief program officer at the Vive Shelter.
The decision by the Trump administration to transfer federal workers from an asylum office in New Jersey to the southern border impacts so-called affirmative asylum seekers — who have been and continue to walk through the doors at Vive on Buffalo's East Side.
"And they entered under a legal status as a tourist or as a businessman a student going to university and then while they were here for some reason were unable to go back to their home country," Mongo said.
Vive's chief program officer says it has come in contact with hundreds of affirmative asylum seekers in recent years.
"In our case, it's people who have been here but we were able to get working papers or authorization to work and then transition out into the community," Mongo said.
Those federal workers, based in New Jersey, would travel to Buffalo to handle asylum cases, but now the vast majority of cases are delayed.
Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon, tweeted last week that not only were workers in New Jersey impacted, but also in Boston, Massachusetts and that there are 40,000 asylum cases pending in these offices.
"So the people who came in legally, filed affirmatively have either been working and participating in society they just have to keep waiting of course it's not fair," Mongo said.
Apart from affirmative asylum, there is a separate category of asylum seekers who are seeking defensive asylum, which are cases that are heard by judges. Those cases are not impacted by this decision by the Trump administration.
Legal experts say there really aren't any time requirements that Immigration Services has to follow with asylum seekers, leaving some to believe that political pressure is the only option most people have.