US-Mexico border

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Texas tragedy highlights migrants’ perilous journey to cross US border

      by

      Texas tragedy highlights migrants’ perilous journey to cross US border The number of migrant deaths in 2021 was 650, a stark reminder of the human cost of US immigration policiesThe deaths of 50 migrants – traveling from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras – in terrible conditions in Texas has cast a spotlight on the immense risks people are willing to take to cross the US border in search of a better financial life or escaping violence in their native countries.Fifty migrants found dead inside abandoned Texas trailer truckRead moreLaura Peña, the legal director of the Texas Civil Rights Project, represents asylum seekers at the border. Responding to the tragedy in San Antonio, she said both the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, and President Biden have “utterly failed people who are trying to seek safety by crossing the border”.“The closure of borders are forcing people to take more dangerous routes. That’s just the facts. It’s resulted in thousands of deaths across the border … And it’s a direct result of these efforts to harden the border and criminalize people instead of investing in processing – simple processing of people who are trying to seek asylum and refuge at our ports of entry at our borders.”The processes Peña is referring to are the same ones used to allow more than 3,000 Ukrainian refugees to enter the US at the border of Mexico.She added: “We’ve been advocating for a dignified, humane process at the border, where people are not forced to risk their lives. We’ve seen the ability of the federal government to do that. We saw all the resources come to bear for our Ukrainian brothers and sisters, rapid humane processing at the border. But when it comes to Black and brown migrants, those same benefits are completely stripped away. They are not afforded across the board. It’s the underlying racism, and how and where both the federal and the state governments choose to militarize.”On Tuesday, Biden called the deaths “horrifying and heartbreaking”.“While we are still learning all the facts about what happened and the Department of Homeland Security has the lead for the investigation, initial reports are that this tragedy was caused by smugglers or human traffickers who have no regard for the lives they endanger and exploit to make a profit.“Exploiting vulnerable individuals for profit is shameful, as is political grandstanding around tragedy, and my administration will continue to do everything possible to stop human smugglers and traffickers from taking advantage of people who are seeking to enter the United States between ports of entry.”The San Antonio fire chief, Charles Hood, said the people found were “hot to the touch”, suffering from heatstroke and heat exhaustion.The peak of summer in San Antonio, where temperatures remain consistently in the 90s or higher, is no deterrent to those seeking work or fleeing persecution. Nor is the prospect of being discovered by border patrol agents. The result of the treacherous journey, however, is the gruesome image of stacks of bodies.The number of migrant deaths in 2021 was 650, the most since 2014. The figure is a stark reminder of the human cost of US immigration policies, which generally limit the number of migrants able to seek asylum.Congressman Joaquín Castro, who represents the district that covers San Antonio, called for ending Title 42, the pandemic-era policy invoked by the Trump administration that allows for turning away migrants without offering them the chance to seek humanitarian protection ostensibly to prevent the spread of contagious diseases like Covid-19.Castro argued that was an immediate aid to the infrastructure of US immigration, which has been overwhelmed.The tragedy in San Antonio tonight, the loss of life, is horrific. My prayers are with the victims, their families and the survivors being treated in our community. May God bless them. We must end Title 42 which has put desperate, oppressed people in grave danger of death. https://t.co/P0l8YmtHmq— Joaquin Castro (@JoaquinCastrotx) June 28, 2022
      More changes to US immigration law are imminent. The conservative-majority supreme court is also set to rule on Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which forces asylum seekers from Mexico to return home while awaiting the result of their pending immigration cases. Advocates argue the policy makes migrants face a forced return to the unsafe and vulnerable conditions from which they were escaping.And to avoid that, advocates say, migrants are willing to endure extremely dangerous conditions and risk everything in hopes of making the journey across the US border with Mexico.Biden tried to end the policy upon taking office, but was unsuccessful.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said: “If the supreme court prevents the Biden administration from ending Remain in Mexico, it will enshrine a new legacy for the United States – a legacy of turning its back on international commitments and sending people directly into harm’s way.”Though Monday’s grim discovery stood among the deadliest tragedies involving migrants, it is not the first of its kind in San Antonio. In 2017, 10 men traveling by tractor-trailer died, having gone without water, food and air conditioning for hours.Further south in Brooks county, Texas, 10 migrants traveling by van died after crashing into a utility pole last August.In Houston, six migrants died in an SUV after being chased by police through rainy weather in 2019.Advocates have long said that those episodes illustrate the risks migrants are willing to take to access the US and leave behind uncertain lives in their native countries.The Texas senator Ted Cruz and Governor Greg Abbott quickly blamed Biden for the most recent deaths in San Antonio. Abbott said: “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”The condemnation of the president comes after members of the Texas GOP criticized Democrats such as gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke for calling for more meaningful gun control measures after the shooting deaths of 19 children and two of their teachers at a school in Uvalde.Following news of the dead in San Antonio, O’Rourke echoed calls for expanding avenues for legal migration to discourage human smuggling rings responsible for organizing such dangerous trips across the border.TopicsUS newsUS politicsTexasUS immigrationMexicoAmericasUS-Mexico borderfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Unpicking of Trump-era asylum curbs primes partisan powder keg

      by

      Unpicking of Trump-era asylum curbs primes partisan powder kegBiden administration belatedly reversed a hard-right assault but humanitarian concerns risk being swamped by politics As the Biden administration announced on Friday plans to end Covid-related restrictions for undocumented people arriving at the southern border, it guaranteed that irregular immigration will return as even more of a polarizing, point-scoring, policy debate.Biden ends Trump-era asylum curbs amid border-region Democrat backlash Read moreAnd as the US hurtles toward midterm elections, another prescient anniversary looms this week.April 6 marks four years since the Trump administration announced its “zero tolerance” policy, the mechanism through which it separated almost 4,000 children from their families in what was widely condemned as an inhumane deterrence effort. Since the practice ended a few months after it was rolled out amid outcry, border policy has lurched from one extreme strategy to another.From “Remain in Mexico”, which pushes asylum seekers back across the border while their cases are processed, to Title 42, the public health order that has allowed border officials to rapidly expel migrants due to the Covid-19 pandemic, before they could claim asylum.On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced the policy will finally end on 23 May.It had been sanctioned by Donald Trump, amid lobbying from senior adviser Stephen Miller, but continued into the Biden era, with the majority of the 1.7 million expulsions under Title 42 occurring under the current president. Joe Biden only recently moved to exclude unaccompanied minors from the sweeping program.Child separation. Remain in Mexico. The use of Title 42. All separate policies born of the same administration and indicative of a profound, hard-right assault on the right to claim asylum in the US.“The end of the cruel and anti-immigrant policy of using Title 42 to expel vulnerable asylum seekers under public health provisions is long overdue,” said Allen Orr, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in a statement. “The thousands upon thousands of migrants, from babies to grandmothers, who were illegally expelled before being allowed to have a meaningful chance to claim protection under our laws merit an acknowledgment that the US got it wrong.”Before the announcement to end use of Title 42 was made by the Biden administration this week, the White House acknowledged that winding down the provisions would probably lead to an increase in arrivals at the southern border.“We are planning for multiple contingencies, and we have every expectation that when the CDC ultimately decides it’s appropriate to lift Title 42, there will be an influx of people to the border,” said the White House communications director, Kate Bedingfield, at a press briefing on Wednesday.The Department of Homeland Security has said it is preparing to manage as many as 18,000 encounters on the border a day and is preparing to surge staff to the region to assist with enforcement and detention.But, say advocates and lawyers operating in the region, such a rise in numbers is probably a direct consequence of the outgoing policy itself.They point to the fact that many of those expected arrivals will be from people seeking asylum who were previously barred from doing so over the past two years.“A post-Title 42 world at the border is simply a return to lawful processing under the asylum system that was set up by Congress decades ago,” said Shaw Drake, a staff attorney at the ACLU Texas, speaking to the Guardian shortly before the CDC announcement on Friday.“When you spend the first year or more of your administration expelling over a million people then you are setting yourself up for an increase in people arriving to the border once that policy is lifted,” Drake, who is based in El Paso, added. “Because … you expelled people who otherwise may have had protection claims that they need to continue in the US to protect themselves from ongoing persecution and danger.”Many of those expelled under the policy have returned to camps along the border where extortion, kidnapping and violence are routinely reported, according to lawyers.“In any given border city [in Mexico] there are thousands of migrants some of whom have been there for over a year, already returned under Title 42,” said immigration attorney Jodi Goodwin, who is based in Harlingen, Texas.She added: “I think the reality is that [Title 42] did nothing to help public health. There was still international movement into the US. I think it was a very thinly – veiled cover for racism, specifically targeted at Central Americans and Haitians.”Goodwin said she had recently spoken to one of her clients at a camp in the border city of Matamoros who informed her that her young daughter had recently been sexually assaulted there.“Where’s the justice? It’s not going to happen. And there are just … a lot of cases like that.”But the humanitarian consequences of Title 42 and policies such as Remain in Mexico, which Biden initially lifted but was reinstated by court order, along with the nuances around projected increases in crossings, appear to have already been lost in partisan rhetoric.As soon as the decision on Title 42 was announced on Friday, Republicans condemned the move, as the party gears up to force the issue as a wedge throughout the midterm election season.The Texas senator Ted Cruz argued the decision would “open the flood gates to more illegal crossings”. Florida Republican senator Rick Scott described it as an “unconscionable plan”.Centrist Democrats too, had begun publicly urging the president not to revoke the directive. On Friday, the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin described the announcement as a “frightening decision”. He described the Trump-era policy as “an essential tool in combatting the spread of Covid-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border”.Those on the ground, too, say there is, as yet, no clear guidance for how exactly the processing of asylum claims might change when the order is lifted.Last week, the Biden administration finalized plans to streamline the asylum application process, meaning applicants could have their claims of credible fear of returning to their countries of origin assessed by customs and border officials rather than immigration judges, due to chronic and growing backlogs in the immigration courts.US immigration courts struggle amid understaffing and backlog of casesRead moreBut a continued rise in border arrivals will require greater humanitarian assistance in the region too.“Humanitarian, on-the-ground NGOs have been preparing for this for two years,” said Karla Vargas, a senior attorney with the Texas Civil Rights project, “but whenever DHS talks about preparation [for a rise in border arrivals] there tends to be a focus on enforcement only. But there really does need to be more focus on the processing of these individuals.“Most of the folks who are waiting that we have spoken to are just regular people, wanting to ask for asylum. To access that right.”TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderBiden administrationUS politicsTrump administrationDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      The US government is deploying robot dogs to the Mexican border. Seriously? | Moustafa Bayoumi

      by

      The US government is deploying robot dogs to the Mexico border. Seriously?Moustafa BayoumiAs if the border isn’t surveilled and militarized enough, the Department of Homeland Security wants to go full Black Mirror Are we all doomed to live in Charlie Brooker’s techno-dystopia? In Metalhead, an episode from season four of his famed Netflix show Black Mirror, a woman navigates an austere post-apocalyptic landscape while running for her life from a murderous robot dog. What makes the mechanized beast in the show particularly frightening is the lethal combination of the single-mindedness of a computer program with the extreme ferocity of an angry, feral dog.But it’s just TV, right? Not exactly. The military, technological, security and political classes in this country appear united in their desire to make robot dogs part of our future, and we should all be worried.The latest example came on 1 February, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release titled “Robot Dogs Take Another Step Towards Deployment at the Border”. DHS dressed up their statement with the kind of adorable language made to warm the hearts of dog lovers everywhere. “The Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) is offering US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) a helping hand (or ‘paw’),” read the release. Isn’t that cute? A picture of the “four-legged ground drone” accompanied the release, and the “Automated Ground Surveillance Vehicle”, as it’s called, looked remarkably (and scarily) similar to the monstrous quadrupeds seen in the Black Mirror episode. But let’s not judge based on appearance. The real issue is that we keep rushing to militarized and technological solutions to what ultimately are human and political questions, creating more problems along the way.These particular robot dogs are made by Ghost Robotics, which claims that its 100lb machine was “bred” to scale “all types of natural terrain including sand, rocks and hills, as well as human-built environments, like stairs”. Each robot dog is outfitted with a bevy of sensors and able to transmit real-time video and information feeds. The devices are not yet in operation on the US-Mexico border, but a testing and evaluation program is under way in El Paso, Texas.To listen to DHS, it all sounds so utterly charming and so very next-gen – until you realize that what we’re talking about is the further encroachment of government surveillance on our daily lives. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes, “people who live along the border are some of the most heavily surveilled people in the United States. A massive amalgamation of federal, state and local law enforcement and national security agencies are flying drones, putting up cameras and just generally attempting to negate civil liberties – capturing the general goings-on of people who live and work in proximity to the border.”Then there’s the question of lethal force. These specific ground drones may not be armed, but Ghost Robotics is already infamous for the combination of robot dog and robot rifle. In 2021, small arms manufacturer Sword International (must these companies choose such dystopian names?) outfitted a robot dog from Ghost Robotics with a custom-made weapon, called a “special purpose unmanned rifle” or Spur. This darling invention was unveiled at the annual conference of the Association of the United States Army.Incidentally, US policy not only does not “prohibit the development or employment” of killer robots (officially known as “lethal autonomous weapon systems,” or Laws) but also opposes any international preemptive ban. Meanwhile, as the Congressional Research Service notes, Israel has already exported what many consider a lethal autonomous weapon system to Chile, China, India, South Korea and Turkey. We’re fast running out of time for robust international dialogue on this issue.Domestically, the short history of the use of the robot dogs in our cities is also troubling. The Honolulu police department used about $150,000 of pandemic funding to buy their robot dog, which they then used to scan the eyes and take the temperatures of unhoused people to check for symptoms of Covid. The practice raised the alarms of advocates who said the practice was fundamentally dehumanizing. Needless to say, no housed person was treated that way.And after public outcry in 2021, the New York police department returned its $94,200 robot dog, Digidog. That robot was deployed to a home invasion in the Bronx and to a tense situation in a public housing building in Manhattan, attracting the angry notice of New Yorkers. Once again, many Black and brown New Yorkers felt over-policed, over-surveilled and under-resourced.“You can’t give me a living wage, you can’t raise a minimum wage, you can’t give me affordable housing; I’m working hard and I can’t get paid leave, I can’t get affordable childcare,” said Representative Jamaal Bowman in a video he posted to Twitter. “Instead we got money, taxpayer money, going to robot dogs?”Bowman is hardly alone. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized both the NYPD’s robot dog in 2021 and the recent news of robot dogs at the border. “It’s shameful how both parties fight tooth + nail to defend their ability to pump endless public money into militarization,” she recently tweeted. “From tanks in police depts to corrupt military contracts, funding this violence is bipartisan + non-controversial, yet healthcare + housing isn’t. It’s BS.”She’s right, of course, as is Bowman. Where exactly are our priorities?The Biden administration has a chance to stop this program in its tracks before the border becomes even more of a militarized, technological dystopia. We’re so easily mesmerized by the massive capabilities of technology, but the fact is that techno-military solutions to human problems too often create more problems than they solve. Just ask the unhoused populations in Honolulu, the urban poor in New York, and – if the program’s not cancelled – asylum seekers on the border. These are the people whose daily realities are increasingly being militarized by this technology. And because they are vulnerable and without political clout, they’re the ones closest to living in a Black Mirror episode. Meanwhile, the rest of us are sold a hi-tech bill of goods that unites everything that Americans love – technology, dogs and guns – and told to believe it’s all for the best.Look, I love my tech and all it can do as much as the next person, but when our embrace of technology reduces rather than enhances our dignity, then we have a problem. Humans deserve better. And frankly, so do dogs – even robot ones.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of the award-winning books How Does It Feel To Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America and This Muslim American Life: Dispatches from the War on Terror. He is a professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionUS-Mexico borderUS militaryUS policingcommentReuse this content More

    • 200 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping for

      by

      How a reboot of Trump’s Remain in Mexico plan isn’t the solution migrants are hoping for Advocates are critical of the immigration policy’s reinstatement, while asylum seekers see the plan as better than nothing from the USEvery day feels like a bad dream to Timoty Correas. He spent five months in a jam-packed tent camp before moving weeks ago to a roach-infested hotel full of migrant families in a neighborhood, blocks from the US border where, he said, during the night local crime cartels would load crowds of smuggled people in and out of houses used as hiding places.Like thousands of other people here, Correas and his eight-year-old son are stranded at the US border, always hoping that hardline pandemic-related restrictions will cease and the processing of asylum seekers by the US will resume.Correas, a vegetable seller, fled Honduras to try to find his parents in Houston, Texas, after gang members took over his house with death threats in May. He planned to seek asylum in the US.‘People with no names’: the drowned migrants buried in pauper’s gravesRead moreCorreas traveled a month with smugglers through Mexico alongside a tide of other northbound migrants and reached Reynosa, across from Hidalgo, Texas, towards the eastern end of the US-Mexico border, in June.But he and his son found the border essentially closed to asylum seekers.Then, when he recently heard on TV news that the US would begin processing asylum cases through a reboot of former president Donald Trump’s controversial Remain in Mexico program, known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), he was hopeful.Although the program would promise a further six-month wait, it was the best news he’d gotten since the summer.“As I understand it, MPP will apply to families,” he said. “They’ll give us an opportunity to speak with a judge. It feels like a big help, a big step toward entering the US legally.”Immigration advocates, however, are fiercely critical of the court-ordered reinstatement this month of the immigration policy that Joe Biden campaigned to repeal, after Trump forced migrants to wait in Mexico, typically in squalor and danger, while their cases wound interminably through a dysfunctional US system.It was one of the final chapters of Trump’s harsh approach throughout, leaving migrants in limbo and greater numbers risking – and losing – their lives to cross anyway via border desert or river.But for thousands of asylum seekers stranded for months on the border with no end in sight, MPP feels like a sign of movement and better than nothing from the US government, which has been expelling migrants under a rule known as Title 42 and blocking most asylum claims under public health grounds since March of 2020.The latest iteration of MPP has kicked off slowly, enrolling 80 people in its first six days in El Paso, Texas, according to the publication Border Report.The US plans to eventually offer MPP at seven ports of entry across the south-west border, although authorities haven’t given a firm timeline.At a muddy tent camp in Reynosa, aid workers said it remained unclear exactly who would qualify for MPP, how many people it would eventually process or how strictly the government would adhere to humanitarian guidelines it set for itself.“Everyone is real excited about it,” said Felicia Rangel, co-director of the Sidewalk School, an aid organization founded when migrant populations first began to accumulate in this area in 2019. “But it’s not a good thing.”Until Trump brought in MPP in 2019, having already tried to block many asylum claims, those fleeing violence who hoped for political asylum were granted refuge in the US and allowed to join relatives in the country, who act as their sponsors, while their cases were heard.Biden repealed MPP upon taking office but continued Title 42, summarily expelling migrants without a chance to make their case.Up to 2,000 such people are living in a camp six blocks from Reynosa’s city center. An additional 1,150 are in tents in a shelter space supervised by the Pathway of Life church and hundreds more are in other shelters, crowded nearby houses or rooms rented by local charities.“Ninety percent or more don’t plan to return to their country,” said Isaac Castellanos, pastor of the Shaddai Ministry church, which offered to host 125 people in tents on its property in late October as the local migrant population began to overwhelm the city.“The option they are waiting for is through MPP.”He said the city has been discussing a large, federally funded shelter for months, but without progress, forcing small private charities to assume support for the humanitarian debacle.At the camp in Reynosa’s plaza, 35-year-old Belen Dubon keeps an “information desk” at a bench on the road to the bridge to Texas, where new arrivals come daily, expelled from the US after crossing the Rio Grande.Dubon, a nurse from Guatemala City who has lived in this camp for almost six months, said newcomers are easy to recognize because US authorities remove their shoelaces before expelling them and because they are covered in dust.Every day more than 100 people arrive, she said, escorted across the nearby bridge by US border patrol, then released on Mexican soil.Dubon helps them find food at community kitchens in the camp and space on the crowded ground to sleep for their first night. But this camp and surrounding shelters are full, so many people seek a place elsewhere.“Their guides who brought them come back and pick them up,” she said, referring to human smugglers. “I don’t know where they go.”Most people here see no option to give up on waiting, she said, because they spent thousands of dollars of mostly borrowed money to pay smugglers to get them here.Others, like Correas and his son, can’t return home because their houses were taken over by gang members. Others have sent their children across the border unaccompanied, in hope they would be able to apply there to stay, despite the prospect of being detained.Some of those children’s parents in Reynosa told the Guardian they’ll wait as long as they must to reunite.Parents such as Iris Betancourt, 36, who fled Honduras with her husband and three children in August after a local gang boss tried to make her 13-year-old daughter his wife and wound up at the camp in Reynosa.Dangerous and unsanitary conditions kept the three kids mostly penned up in the tent, she said, while Betancourt’s sister in Houston encouraged her to send them to live safely with her.On 31 October, Betancourt and her husband took the kids out for ice-cream, hugged them close all night then paid smugglers $500 per child the next morning to sneak them into the US, where they expected to be apprehended, and would give authorities the contact information for their aunt in Houston.The kids spent a month and seven days in a secure New York City shelter under the US Office of Refugee Resettlement, then arrived in Houston this month, Betancourt said.“I don’t know when I’ll see them again. I don’t know if I’ll wait here for years,” she said, crying. “I wonder every day, will I get in or not? Will the wait be worth the sacrifice?”Aid workers say thousands of children have been similarly sent over by parents in recent months. Figures from US Health and Human Services show more than 13,000 unaccompanied children in government custody as of 10 December, with roughly 500 discharged each day to sponsors across the country. Yet the parents who stay behind at the border face a slim chance of achieving legal entry into the US.Under Trump, MPP had a less-than-1% acceptance rate for asylum cases.Although Biden’s reboot lists new protections for enrolled migrants, it still isn’t clear exactly how the program will operate, said Alex Norman, a former paralegal who helps process emergency immigration parole cases at the camp in Reynosa.“They aren’t going to have the capacity to process thousands of people who are here now,” said Norman, who sits in on calls between DHS officials and local aid organizations.“Or the thousands who are on their way now that they hear there are asylum possibilities.”Eleanor Acer of advocacy group Human Rights First told NPR that MPP was a “humanitarian fiasco” under Trump and would be so under Biden, too.Yet migrants such as Correas, think any sort of shift in US policy is the best news he’s gotten after six months of limbo.His parents fled Honduras in the 1990s when he was a child and his dream of bringing his own son to be with them in a safe city motivates him now to wait indefinitely.“To be with my mom and dad, it will be the greatest gift of my life,” he said. “If I have to wait six or seven months like MPP says, then I’ll have to learn to adapt.”TopicsUS-Mexico borderUS immigrationBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

    • 100 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden administration reinstates Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy

      by

      Biden administration reinstates Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ policyBiden called the policy inhumane after Trump administration used it to return over 60,000 asylum seekers across the border Asylum seekers looking to enter the US from its southern border will again be sent to Mexico while their claims are assessed, with the Biden administration announcing the reinstatement of the controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy on Thursday.Remain in Mexico policy needlessly exposed migrants to harm, report saysRead moreThe US and Mexican governments haver agreed to a resumption of the program, put in place by Donald Trump in 2019, following its previous suspension by Joe Biden after he became president. It will initially begin in San Diego and in the Texas cities of Laredo, Brownsville and El Paso next week.Biden had called the arrangement inhumane after it was used by Trump’s administration to return more than 60,000 asylum seekers across the border to Mexico, where they were often preyed upon by criminal gangs. Many people were left waiting for months in limbo in Mexico as their fate was determined.In October, Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said that the program “had endemic flaws, imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulled resources and personnel away from other priority efforts, and did not address the root causes of irregular migration”.However, Republican officials in Missouri and Texas sued Biden’s administration in federal court to prevent the scrapping of the return to Mexico policy, claiming that it would place an undue burden on them from incoming migrants.The supreme court ultimately concurred with the states, placing an injunction on the federal government in August which forced it to resume the program. Since then, federal officials have been negotiating with their Mexican counterparts on how the scheme will resume.Under the reinstated deal, single adult asylum seekers will be the primary focus of the removals, with those transferred offered Covid-19 vaccinations. Mexico will accept asylum seekers from Spanish-speaking countries, the Washington Post reported.The US will aim to complete migrants’ claims within 180 days, amid fears they will be left to languish in Mexico. The US Department of Justice is assigning 22 immigration judges to work specifically on these cases.Supporters of the system have claimed it will help reduce the flow of migrants into the US but advocates have argued that there is little evidence that this will happen and point to the often dire humanitarian situation the program has exacerbated on the border.People expelled by the US often end up in sprawling tent camps or sub-standard housing in places such as Tijuana and Reynosa that often lack basic foods and amenities for asylum seekers.According to Human Rights First, a US human rights group, there have been more than 1,500 cases of reported kidnappings and attacks against migrants subjected to the system, known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), and thousands more under another Trump policy known as Title 42 that uses public health concerns to eject asylum seekers.“President Biden and his administration must stop implementing Trump policies that endanger the lives and safety of people seeking refuge in the United States,” said Eleanor Acer, senior director for refugee protection at Human Rights First.Trump’s ‘shameful’ migrant stance condemns thousands to violent limbo in MexicoRead more“Remain in Mexico and other policies that flout asylum laws and treaties are inhumane and unjust. Every day they are in place, they deliver people seeking protection to places where they are targets of brutal attacks and kidnappings perpetrated by deadly cartels and corrupt Mexican officers.”The Biden administration has also been sharply criticized by refugee advocates for the growing number of immigrants being held at private facilities. Biden had promised to end the private, for-profit jails but has exempted the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agency from this effort and the number of immigrants in detention has nearly doubled to 29,000 since he took office.“Frankly, it’s infuriating,” Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for Detention Watch Network, told the Washington Post. “It’s incredibly disappointing. We really expected more.”TopicsUS immigrationUS-Mexico borderBiden administrationTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden to reinstate Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ migrant policy

      by

      US immigrationBiden to reinstate Trump-era ‘Remain in Mexico’ migrant policyDoJ says reinstatement depends on approval from MexicoCourt overturned Biden’s initial decision to suspend policy Amanda Holpuch@holpuchFri 15 Oct 2021 14.57 EDTLast modified on Fri 15 Oct 2021 15.55 EDTThe Biden administration said on Friday it plans to reinstate the Trump-era border policy known as Remain in Mexico, which forced at least 70,000 asylum seekers to stay in Mexico, many for extended periods and in deprived and dangerous conditions, while they waited for their cases to be considered US courts.Senior state department official calls Biden’s deportation of Haitians illegalRead moreJoe Biden suspended the policy formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) in his first days in office, but a federal judge ordered his administration to put it back into place.In a court filing late on Friday, the US justice department said the program’s reinstatement depended on approval from the Mexican government, which is asking for the asylum cases to be settled in six months and for the US to ensure the people affected have timely and accurate information as well as better access to legal counsel. The program is expected to be back in effect in mid-November.Donald Trump introduced Remain in Mexico in January 2019. From the beginning, advocates criticized the program because it put highly vulnerable migrants, mostly from Central and South America, at serious risk of physical harm and illness as they waited in some of the most dangerous cities in the world. It also fails to address the forces pushing people north to the US-Mexico border and the huge backlogs in US immigration courts.Campaign group Human Rights Watch said in a January report about the policy that affected asylum seekers it interviewed, including children, “described rape or attempted rape and other sexual assault, abduction for ransom, extortion, armed robbery, and other crimes committed against them”.The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) immigrants’ rights policy director, Omar Jadwat, said via Twitter that the news was “appalling” and acknowledged the Biden administration was required by a court order to make a “good faith” effort to restart it.“They had a lot of options here, including re-terminating MPP promptly and seeking to vacate the order,” Jadwat said.To restart the program, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to spend $14.1m to reopen temporary courtrooms located in tents in Laredo and Brownsville, Texas, which will cost $10.5m a month to operate, according to a court filing.In June, the DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, formally put an end to the policy and in a memo said: “MPP had mixed effectiveness in achieving several of its central goals and that the program experienced significant challenges.”TopicsUS immigrationMexicoAmericasTrump administrationUS politicsBiden administrationUS-Mexico bordernewsReuse this content More