Deportation flyers ‘issue of due process’ affecting immigrants and US citizens
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A recent surge in self-deportation flyers has now hit Kansas City, targeting immigrants and potentially affecting US citizens, according to attorneys.
Two flyers posted inside the city’s immigration court waiting room are raising concerns for immigration attorneys across the nation, including Andrea Martinez, based in Kansas City.
“I think it’s like these constant pitfalls. Refugee Hunger Games, as I often call them. These immigrants have pitfalls literally everywhere,” she said.
The flyers list ‘benefits’ and ‘consequences’ of self-deportation. The flyers state, ‘future opportunity for legal immigration’. However, Martinez explained, that’s not true. She said immigrants have a 10-year bar that prohibits them from reentering the United States.
The flyers also include a QR code that leads to the US Customs and Border Patrol website. It brings anyone who scans it specifically to a part of the website that gives steps for self-deportation in various languages.
Martinez believes the pieces of paper are confusing to immigrants, but mostly, unethical. She explained it gives them the ‘wrong legal advice’, essentially encouraging them to throw away their day in court, of which all people have the right to.
She said the flyers are popping up in courtrooms across the nation because immigration court is held under the Executive Branch. Martinez explained judges are being told to distribute the flyers by their boss, the President.
She called it a slippery slope between what should be a neutral and unbiased judicial system and White House orders.
“Now, we basically have the judges acting like another wing of Homeland Security and another wing of deportation agents,” Martinez stated.
Out of the many issues Martinez said are in these flyers, she said overall, they’re dangerous for anyone, regardless of their citizenship status.
“It doesn’t just affect immigrants. If immigrants aren’t being treated with due process, then US citizens can be next. We’ve been saying the same thing about Venezuelans that were sent to the Gola in El Salvador,” Martinez warned. “That if a person is able to be sent without due process out of the country and didn’t have a right to prove their case, then there is nothing to say that a US citizen won’t be the next one to be sent without a hearing, without the ability to prove their case.”
KCTV5 called and emailed the US Department of Justice with a list of questions about the deportation flyers.
In an email, Press Secretary and Office of Policy, Kathryn Mattingly for the US Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review, said, “The Executive Office for Immigration Review declines to comment. "
Martinez is urging immigrants not to self-deport and to wait for their court date.
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