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Stranded in Tijuana, a group of asylum seekers from Cameroon, Uganda and Ethiopia came together in a shared hotel room. There, they would wait for the Trump administration’s policies that had blocked their ability to request protection in the United States amid the pandemic.
The group has been harassed, threatened and extorted by Mexican officials since arriving in the border city, an Ethiopian told human rights investigators.
“The conditions are very horrible,” said the man about the hotel. “We have to buy everything, like sheets and everything we need. They give us these rotten mattresses. There’s a lot [of] insects and animals “.
Then in November, a new hotel owner kicked the group out onto the streets, saying he doesn’t like Africans, the asylum seeker said.
The group is among the many thousands of asylum seekers trapped in Tijuana and along the U.S.-Mexico border struggling to survive as their temporary housing options shift where and orders that block their entry into the states. United extend indefinitely.
Their plight is just one of the examples set out in a report published by Human Rights First in December that looked at the ways in which asylum seekers have been increasingly harmed by U.S. immigration policies in 2020, especially those implemented. after the arrival of the pandemic.
“This is both a humanitarian shame and a legal charade,” the report says of a series of orders from the Trump administration.
The group of asylum seekers from African countries, like many others along the US-Mexico border, had been waiting before the pandemic for their numbers to be added to the waiting lists that have become in the process. de facto for migrants to request asylum at ports of entry. . The policy, known as “metering,” restricted how many ports of entry for asylum seekers they would process on any given day.
When the pandemic hit, ports of entry stopped processing asylum seekers altogether.
The Trump administration then issued an order through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to prevent asylum seekers who illegally cross into the United States, the only other option when ports of entry are closed, not even take the initial steps in the long application process. protection in the US asylum system
Under the order, border officials return many asylum seekers to the country they were most recently in, usually Mexico. Officials also detain asylum seekers and then put them on planes back to the countries they fled from.
Sending asylum seekers back to their countries of origin without screening them to see if they qualify for asylum goes against a key part of international agreements on the treatment of refugees.
Several Nicaraguan asylum seekers who fled their country after being imprisoned and tortured for protesting the Daniel Ortega regime were put on planes back to Nicaragua without any screening process to see if they should be protected, the report says. Once back in Nicaragua, they were detained and interrogated and are still being watched by Ortega’s network.
Mexican asylum seekers have been deported to Mexico, the report says, including a young man who was sent back through the Nogales port of entry around midnight in freezing temperatures, and a woman whose 2-day-old baby had born within the United States. .
Less than 1% of those expelled received an examination related to their fears of returning home in the first three months of the pandemic, the report found.
The expulsions include at least 8,800 unaccompanied children, the report says, and possibly as many as 14,000.
In October and November, the Border Patrol carried out 119,500 removals, according to Customs and Border Protection data. Authorities have said that many of these evictions are of people crossing multiple times.
The Trump administration has said the removal policy is aimed at preventing COVID-19 from spreading within the United States and avoiding detaining migrants together in holding cells.
“The administration’s preventative measure protected DHS front-line employees, those in our custody, and the American public, thus preventing a potential disaster along the border,” Chad Wolf said in a recent speech. He has served as Acting Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security despite a judge ruling that he was illegally placed in office.
But asylum seekers who are expelled to their home countries are detained, and generally screened for the coronavirus, before being loaded onto planes, according to the human rights report. That, Human Rights First argues, runs counter to the government’s justification of the policy.
Public health experts from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and George Washington University have called for the removal program to be halted, arguing that there are safe ways to quickly process asylum seekers and allow them to shelter in place with their loved ones in the United States. State.
Human Rights First found that asylum application blocks at ports of entry and expulsions of people caught crossing illegally have led more migrants to try to cross more remote parts of the border where they are less likely to be noticed, and more likely to die.
Ibrain Wencislao Pérez Suárez, a 30-year-old Cuban political activist who fled persecution, disappeared across the Texas desert in July, the report said. His family is still trying to find out what happened to him.
A Nicaraguan asylum seeker was hospitalized for nine days for severe dehydration that caused kidney damage after he tried to cross the desert. Later, border officials expelled him to Nogales while he was still wearing his hospital gown, the report says.
Expelled asylum seekers and those stranded by meters are not the only ones left in danger in Mexico.
Migrants who are forced to wait south of the border for the duration of their immigration cases in the United States under the “Remain in Mexico” program, officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP for short, are being further harmed. due to the pandemic, the report says. . That’s because violence against migrants in Mexico is increasing, migrant shelters are closing, and the federal government has indefinitely halted court hearings on cases under the program.
Human Rights First has tracked more than 1,300 reported cases of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping or other violent attacks against asylum seekers waiting in the program since it began two years ago.
Cartels in the Chihuahua state border region, where many migrants are sent back, have focused their efforts on kidnapping and extorting asylum seekers whom the United States has returned, according to a Mexican prosecutor there. And many asylum seekers report being attacked by the Mexican police itself.
A Nicaraguan man returned to Tijuana under MPP was beaten and robbed by Mexican police and still faces harassment from officers, immigration attorney Margaret Cargioli of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center told investigators.
A Cuban woman waiting on the Remain in Mexico program in Ciudad Juárez was kidnapped, beaten and raped by Mexican police in June, a lawyer representing her told Human Rights First. Once free, she immediately crossed into the United States, visibly injured, to ask for help, the report says, and US border officials sent her back to Mexico again.
There are about 23,000 pending cases in the Remain in Mexico program, the report says, and about 70% of them have been waiting for more than a year through January.
Roughly 3,500 new MPP cases were opened during the pandemic, the report found, meaning that those asylum seekers were placed in the program rather than being expelled under the pandemic policy. Most are from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
Morrissey writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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