by Ruthie Epstein
Deputy Director // Immigration Policy // ACLU
Today marks one year since the Trump administration implemented its forced Return to Mexico policy. In that time, the U.S. has sent tens of thousands of asylum seekers to dangerous northern border cities in Mexico to wait for their hearings in the U.S. It is the most visible but by no means the only policy that the administration has adopted in its effort to systematically dismantle the U.S. asylum system over the past two years.
The asylum system may seem distant and abstract to many Americans, but along with the refugee resettlement system, it’s the foundation of our country’s commitment to providing safety for people fleeing desperate conditions. In 1939, off the coast of Florida, the U.S. turned away a ship named the St. Louis, which carried 1,000 refugees fleeing Nazi persecution in Europe. Nearly a third of the passengers were killed by the end of World War II. In the aftermath of the war and the horrors of the Holocaust, the U.S., along with other countries, resolved that people fleeing violence and persecution, like those on the St. Louis, would no longer be met with global indifference. Our country formalized the commitment in the bipartisan Refugee Act of 1980, which enshrined the principle of asylum in domestic immigration law. Since then, millions have found safety in the U.S., sometimes fleeing dangerous conditions created by our own foreign policy. The United States’ obligation is not only a legal one; it’s a moral one as well.
How quickly this administration has undone it all. We are now shipping tens of thousands of asylum seekers to other countries to avoid fulfilling our obligations. In January 2019, the administration rolled out the forced Return to Mexico program, officially called the Migrant Protection Protocols. Under MPP, DHS has sent almost 60,000 asylum seekers to wait for their hearings in Mexico — an unprecedented, illegal practice that forces vulnerable families to live in dangerous and dire conditions. MPP, along with another policy called “metering,” which illegally delays asylum seekers from entering at formal ports of entry at the U.S.-Mexico border, created full-blown humanitarian crises in cities like Matamoros and Juárez , where people are living in makeshift encampments or other shelters, often without access to adequate water, food, or medical care. Human Rights First documented at least 816 public reports of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping, and other violence against asylum seekers and migrants subjected to MPP.
In November, the Trump administration issued new “safe third country” regulations that detail illegal procedures by which DHS will send people seeking safety in the U.S. to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras to apply for asylum in those countries instead. Tens of thousands of people flee those countries every year, and none has a fair and effective asylum system that could possibly handle the large volume of applications they’ll receive under this scheme.
For those asylum seekers who somehow manage to avoid being immediately sent to Mexico or Central America and are able to request asylum in the U.S., the administration has created even more hurdles.
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