Is a 14-hour trip necessary? Erie Afghan refugees could face long trek for asylum interviews

Haieda Sharifi just got her driver's license in June.

In a past interview with the Erie Times-News, Sharifi, an Afghan refugee who resettled in Erie in January, said she couldn't wait to get her license so she could take her whole family to Lake Erie.

And that's exactly what she did.

"They were very excited," Sharifi, 21, said. "Every Saturday they told me, 'Let’s go to the beach,' so I brought them and my brothers swam. It was fun."

Despite the occasional parking challenge, Sharifi said having a car has made getting around Erie a lot easier for her and her family. But she feared driving on highways.

Up until now, Sharifi has avoided the faster, heavier traffic of the interstates, but as her asylum interview date approaches, she might have to face that fear.

An influx of asylum seekers

People who come to the United States seeking protection can choose to apply for asylum through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Asylum is a form of protection that allows an individual to remain in the U.S. instead of being deported to a country where they fear persecution or harm.

If one chooses to apply for asylum, they must file an I-589 asylum application within one year of their arrival in the U.S. In July, Michael Barron, staff attorney for the Erie field office of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants, was busy filing many I-589 applications before the end of August.

"As you can imagine, most of these folks' date of entry was August because that’s when Kabul fell," Barron said. "Arguably, your application could be rejected if you don’t apply in one year."

Related:460 Afghan refugees resettle in Erie seeking safety, new life

Once applications are approved, USCIS schedules an applicant's asylum interview, which can either take place at a USCIS asylum office or a USCIS field office, also called a circuit ride location.

Of the first five applications Barron sent to USCIS almost two months ago, all asylum interviews were scheduled to take place at the asylum office in Arlington, Virginia. Including stops for food and bathroom breaks, it's a nearly 14-hour round-trip from Erie to Arlington.

To Barron, requiring the Afghan refugees in Erie to make the trek to Arlington is an "unnecessary hurdle" for both them and the organizations — USCRI Erie, Catholic Charities and the Multicultural Community Resource Center — handling their cases.

"It’s an absurd thing to make these people do this type of work when it’s a matter of moving one or two people for a week as opposed to moving over 100 to Arlington, Virginia," he said.

'A point of frustration'

Since discovering that the first round of asylum interviews, which are scheduled for Monday through Wednesday, are expected to take place in Virginia, Barron has reached out to USCIS asking if they could be moved closer to Erie.

"There has been some talk of getting them moved to Pittsburgh, but we have not received anything yet," Barron said. "Even then, the whole family has to go and some of these families have nine people in their family, so now you have to pack everyone up, find a way to get to Pittsburgh, which, yeah, it’s not Arlington, but it’s still Monroeville, so it’s three hours from Erie for a potentially two-hour interview.

"It’s been a point of frustration because whether it’s Arlington, Pittsburgh or even Buffalo, it just seems odd one agent down there can’t come here."

USCRI is also required to bring interpreters, witnesses and attorneys along for the interviews. In July, Barron sought the help of U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly, of Butler, R-16th Dist. He detailed in a letter the logistical challenges if interviews were to be conducted outside of Erie.

"The lack of fluency in English, driver's licenses, credit cards for booking hotels, automobiles, viable public transportation options between Erie and the USCIS office in Monroeville, and/or the general financial means for travel expenses are just some of the insurmountable barriers for travel for these individuals," Barron wrote.

Kelly's office told Barron they would look into the situation, but Barron said he has not received anything further.

Finding interpreters to travel with these families has added "another layer of complexity," Barron said. In March, USCIS issued a temporary final rule that extended the requirement for certain asylum applicants to use a telephonic interpreter during COVID-19, but Barron received information from USCIS that said otherwise.

Related:How the Sharifis, an Afghan refugee family, are learning to make Erie home

"The interpreter cannot be someone with an application in front of USCIS," he said. "I have to go and find another interpreter, which, as you can imagine, who’s a Dari interpreter in Erie, PA, who does not have an application in front USCIS?

"I was told by USCIS that if you don’t bring one and there’s not one available, your meeting can be canceled, so you can drive down there for seven hours, no interpreter? Go home."

Struggling to find accommodations

Transportation seems to be the biggest concern for Afghan families, Sharifi said.

Sharifi and her sister's interviews are scheduled for Monday while her mother and aunt's interviews are scheduled for Wednesday. Plans for other members of her family have yet to be determined.

"My mom is always asking me, 'Did you talk to your boss? Are they getting drivers for Virginia or no?,' " Sharifi said. "As far as I know, the Arabic people who had asylum interviews in the past, they went to Buffalo or Pittsburgh, so I don’t know why for us, we have to go to Virginia."

Before learning of these interviews, Sharifi said she had no idea where Virginia even was.

"Navigation will already be stressful," she said. "I can’t do six hours, that’s too much for me, because I am a new driver and I am very afraid of driving on highways."

Barron said USCRI might need to contract buses, but Dylanna Grasinger, executive director of USCRI, said the nonprofit does not have the funds to pay for travel.

"We have the funding to offer the legal services, but the transportation, the lodging and food, those just aren’t factored into budgets," she said. "We’re looking at next steps and how we can best support it."

In the next few months, as more asylum interviews are scheduled, Barron anticipates there could be as many as a dozen trips USCRI will need to coordinate, regardless if they're to Pittsburgh, Buffalo or Virginia.

"USCRI, a charitable, a nonprofit, is having to coordinate these things at their expense ... it’s such an unnecessary waste," Barron said. "They (USCIS) have the full finances of the U.S. government and they're putting it on charitable organizations to fill in those gaps."

Why can't they go to Buffalo instead?

Alexandria Iwanenko, an immigration law attorney for Amicangelo & Theisen, is handling the asylum applications for both Catholic Charities and MCRC. Although none of her 11 families have interviews scheduled yet, she's preparing them for a trip Virginia as well.

While Erie might not be a possible location for interviews, Iwanenko has been pushing USCIS to conduct them in their Buffalo field office, where other interviews for citizenship and green cards take place.

"All of my other clients already go to Buffalo, so why can’t the asylum clients also go to Buffalo?" she said. "The asylum office already has a circuit ride in Buffalo, so there will already be asylum officers there doing these interviews."

Iwanenko discovered that asylum interviews in Buffalo are only being offered to those who live in Rochester, Buffalo and Niagara Falls, even though the distance between Erie and Buffalo is similar to the distance between Buffalo and Rochester.

"It’s almost like I want to pull out a map and just show we’re so much closer to New York state," Iwanenko said. "Other people have been able to benefit from the circuit rides, so it just feels like we were forgotten about in those considerations."

Related:To help Erie's Afghan refugees, start by learning more about their country, culture

Iwanenko thinks it could be because Buffalo's office is a small USCIS office that can't accommodate 30-plus families coming from Erie, but still finds the uncertainty frustrating.

"It’s kind of just been silence, so we’re in a limbo of preparing for everything but then not really knowing where we’re going to be," she said.

"It’s just a lot of anxiety for a group of people who have already experienced the worst that could possibly happen," she said. "They’ve been through so much trauma already that we don’t want to continue with the traumatic cycle, and I think this just adds to what they’re already experiencing."

Keeping a realistic mindset

Iwanenko is not expecting asylum interviews to be scheduled for her families until the end of October, but recently received correspondence from USCIS saying they're "actively looking into circuit ride options for Erie, PA," according to the email.

The email stated USCIS is looking into options in Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Cleveland, which gives Iwanenko hope that accommodations could be made.

"The good part is we’re on an accelerated schedule," she said. "It’s kind of unheard of to have an asylum interview within 45 days of submitting the application. I have clients who they applied in 2015 and they’re still waiting for their interviews, so this is something the U.S. specifically did for people from Afghanistan, to get these applications processed on an expedited basis, so that is helpful and beneficial."

But without a sure answer from USCIS, Barron is mildly hopeful moving the asylum interviews closer to Erie can be done.

"I’m hopeful, but until I see it in writing I have zero hope," he said. "We’ll take last-minute, but dealing with the government, especially government forms, unless it’s in writing and right in front of my face with the date and time, then I’m planning for Virginia and that’s what USCRI is planning for."

Baylee DeMuth can be reached at 814-450-3425 or bdemuth@timesnews.com. Follow her on Twitter @BayleeDeMuth.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Asylum interviews for Erie Afghan refugees to possibly be in Virginia