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Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist
PHOTO: Twitter
Emily Green reports for Vice News:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/3abwb9/title-42-mexico-migrants-stuck
REYNOSA, Mexico — A 2-1/2 year old boy dragged an oversized suitcase along the sidewalk excitedly, on the edge of a cramped migrant encampment straddling the U.S.-Mexico border. Every few seconds, he looked behind him to make sure his parents were still there. But the boy wasn’t going anywhere, and the suitcase was empty, much like the yearned-for promise of being finally allowed to enter the United States. The boy, born in Brazil, and his parents, from Haiti, have spent five months living in a tent just feet from the U.S. border.
“We will stay here until we can go to the other side,” the boy’s father said.
On April 1, the Biden administration announced that on May 23, it will rescind Title 42, the pandemic-era, public-health policy that allowed for the automatic expulsion of more than a million migrants to Mexico and other countries. The policy is why the little boy and his parents hadn’t sought asylum. They’re scared that if they crossed into the U.S. and asked for protection, they’ll be deported to Haiti. They instead opted to wait in Reynosa, despite its reputation as one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities.
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The repeal of the Trump-era rule is expected to trigger an influx of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border. Already, around 2,500 people are living in the public plaza here at the edge of the border, their tents packed together so tightly there’s barely room to walk. While the policy change won’t take effect for a month and a half, the response on both sides of the international line couldn’t be more different.
In the U.S., officials are busy expanding border facilities and sending more personnel to staff emergency operations. In Mexico meanwhile, most of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers who’ve been waiting for months to cross legally at a port of entry have received no information from authorities and seem completely in the dark about what’s to come. There are no guidelines for who gets to enter first, nor instructions about when and where to cross, or even a line to sign up for.
Compounding the confusion, many of the migrants have no idea why they were denied entry to the U.S to request asylum in the first place. They have only the vaguest notion of Title 42, and what its repeal could mean for them. The information they have largely comes via word of mouth, which human smugglers frequently spin to sell their services.
But migrants may be headed towards disappointment as Title 42 winds down and another restrictive immigration policy is likely ramped up.
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Jacki, a Honduran woman who has spent six months in the encampment with her four-year-old daughter, learned of Title 42’s end through a reporter (not this one). Jacki and the other migrants interviewed for this story declined to provide their last names. “We are all excited… but… I don’t know,” Jacki said. “It’s too good to be true.”
She may be right. Department of Homeland Security officials said that in the wake of winding down Title 42, it will increase its use of the policy known as Migrant Protection Protocols, or “Remain in Mexico,” which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their cases are decided. It’s possible that asylum seekers stranded in some of Mexico’s most dangerous border cities by Title 42 could finally enter the U.S. and ask for protection, only to be returned to Mexico under Remain in Mexico.
The Biden administration has also expanded “Remain in Mexico” to include Haitians, who make up the fastest-growing group of migrants in Reynosa. Even with Title 42 gone, gaining legal entry into the U.S. is uncertain at best.
For migrants, U.S. immigration policy can feel like a game of whack-a-mole. From Feb. 2021 to Dec. 2021, during Biden’s first year in office, immigration agents allowed roughly 29 percent of migrants encountered at the southern border to enter the U.S. and plead their case before an immigration judge, according to the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of migrants. The rest were summarily expelled under Title 42 to Mexico or another country, or sent to ICE detention.
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Read the rest of Emily’s article at the link.
The way to start breaking backlogs and restoring confidence in the rule of law is to identify and prioritize asylum grants!
That’s precisely the opposite of the misguided border policies that Administrations of both parties have followed for the past two decades: Move unrepresented individuals to the front of the line and issue lots of bogus in absentias and hasty denials in a perverted, and highly ineffective, attempt to use our legal system as a “deterrent” and to “send don’t come messages.”
The Biden Administration should have a team of trained Refugee Officers and Asylum Officers in Mexico, now, working with pro bono advocates and NGOs to identify and “pre-process/pre-approve” asylum cases that can be granted on May 23 or shortly thereafter. That would start clearing out the camps in Mexico, reducing processing backlogs, and lessening pressure on the Immigration Courts. Incidentally, it would also provide needed potential legal workers for the U.S. economy.
It would also establish the credibility of the asylum processing program (something now in tatters) at legal ports of entry. That, in turn, would incentivize individuals to use orderly asylum processing rather than being lured by smugglers into attempting dangerous irregular entries.
A major overlooked fact in the restrictionist babble (disgustingly repeated even by some Administration officials and Dem politicos) about “illegal border crossings” is that the U.S. has had no transparent legal asylum system at ports of entry for years. Our Government’s failure, has empowered smugglers, encouraged irregular entry, and endangered asylum seekers. Amazingly, despite years of bad faith, dishonesty, and insulting “die elsewhere” racist messages, tens of thousands of individuals have waited patiently on the Mexican side of the Southern Border, in horrid and life-threatening conditions, for appointments, hearings, and adjudications that have never happened and that are often biased and unfair on those occasions when they did take place.
The Biden Administration should also be working in Mexico with NGOs to provide accurate information (NOT “stay home and die” propaganda) about the U.S. Asylum program, the legal documentation requirements, opportunities for representation and counseling, and what will happen after May 23. Given the lack of honesty, transparency, accuracy, and humanity in many “official” USG pronouncements, it’s no wonder desperate folks seek information and guidance elsewhere.
An essential part of the foregoing is to establish officially-maintained prioritized processing lists for ports of entry. As noted in Emily’s article, informal “do it yourself” lists are being maintained by unofficial and unregulated “gatekeepers.” This has been a key reason why the U.S. system lacks credibility and orderliness.
It’s not “rocket science.” 🚀 But, as usual, when it comes to immigration, human rights, and equal justice, the Biden Administration lacks dynamic expert leadership, a positive vision of immigration, and the ability to “pick off the low hanging fruit.”
As I have pointed out before, in the absence of a plan, the best hope for an orderly transition to a restored legal asylum program might well be NGOs and volunteers who could step in where the Administration is failing! https://immigrationcourtside.com/2022/04/02/%f0%9f%97%bd%e2%9a%96%ef%b8%8f-cdc-announces-end-of-covid-bar-but-only-7-weeks-from-now-compare-what-dhs-should-have-said-with-what-they-did-say-with-51/
🗽🇺🇸Due Process Forever!
PWS
04-06-22
