NOGALES, Mexico (CN) — The Trump administration’s “remain in Mexico” policy for asylum-seekers has sparked a human-rights crisis that already has killed several people, and it’s getting worse, according to volunteers working in Mexican border towns and a recent report from a federal watchdog.
The policy, formally the Migrant Protection Protocols, and the practice of “metering,” or processing just a handful of asylum applications daily at each border crossing, have led to a buildup of immigrants in Mexico who previously would have been allowed to wait in the United States.
The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, a bipartisan federal watchdog, condemned the combination of practices in an October report, “Trauma at the Border: The Human Cost of Inhumane Immigration Policies.”
“Several asylum seekers who were turned away from U.S. ports of entry have been killed, women have been raped, and children have been kidnapped, calling into question the relative safety of Central Americans in Mexico,” the commission reported on Oct. 24.
Days later, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan, who later resigned, defended the policy and expanded it to the port of entry at Eagle Pass, Texas.
“We are confident in the program’s integrity and ability to adjudicate asylum claims quickly and with all due process,” McAleenan said Oct. 28. “We have already seen individuals granted asylum, and many more fraudulent or nonmeritorious cases closed. MPP has been, and remains, an essential part of these efforts.”
The policy has resulted in more than 55,000 people being returned to Mexico and an 80% drop in the number of immigrant families encountered at the border, and is shortening the time they wait for court dates, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
“MPP returnees with meritorious claims can be granted relief or protection within months, rather than remaining in limbo for years while awaiting immigration court proceedings in the United States,” Homeland Security claims.
In Brownsville and Laredo, Texas, Homeland Security erected large tents to hear cases, 13,000 of which had been heard by Oct. 21. But most people are turned back at the border to wait, often for three or four months, usually on the streets of dangerous border towns.
“This was the case for Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 1-year-old daughter, Valeria, who tried to enter the United States at the official port of entry at Matamoros-Brownsville,” the Commission on Civil Rights reported. "They were told it was closed, and drowned while crossing the Río Grande."
Conditions in Matamoros, where about 13,000 people are stranded, remain squalid and overcrowded, said attorney Charlene D’Cruz of Lawyers for Good Government, a nonprofit operating the only full-time legal-aid office in the city.
One recent night D’Cruz stood huddled on the Rio Grande bridge with a 2-year-old Central American girl whose family is awaiting an asylum hearing. The girl, who doctors feared had sepsis, was feverish and wrapped in a blanket in a 42-degree rain.
After more than three hours of waiting, a Border Patrol doctor agreed the girl was in danger, and she was sent to a U.S. hospital, D’Cruz said.
“That girl could have died,” she said.
Lawyers for Good Government provides immigrants with legal advice, though they do not represent them in court. Many are fleeing violence in Central America and Mexico and are willing to face extreme risks.
