US authorities begin to deport migrants back to Mexico

Starting next week, the Trump administration will send most immigrant families arrested along the southern border back to Mexico awaiting an immigration court hearing. This policy appears to be an alternative to detaining asylum seekers indefinitely, but it raises concerns about the safety of the people involved.

Photo: Facebook /The White House

A change in policy signals a significant expansion in the administration’s program, requiring immigrants who fear persecution and seek asylum to wait in Mexico for their cases to be heard.

As of September 1, the Trump administration sent over 42 000 migrants back to Mexico awaiting decisions on their asylum applications, but almost 458 000 families were arrested at the border between October 2018 and August 2019, when an unprecedented number of families flee runaway crime , violence and corruption in Central America.

Trump has repeatedly stated that catch and release allow immigrants to evade court dates and remain in the US without permission. But most immigrants do come to the courts. Immigration judges ordered immigrants to be deported when they failed to appear in the immigration court in approximately 25 percent of cases in the 2018 financial year, similar to the figures for the previous five years.

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The Trump administration claims that keeping immigrants in custody during a trial is the only way to ensure their presence at court hearings. Consequently, last year he introduced a policy of “zero tolerance”, according to which he tried to detain all immigrants crossing the border without permission - a policy that resulted in a widespread separation of families.

But on Monday, Acting Secretary of the Homeland Security Department Kevin MacAlanan said his department could not detain families for more than 21 days in accordance with a long-standing federal court order known as the Flores Settlement Agreement. The agreement established basic standards for the care of immigrant children in custody, including a restriction on how long they can remain in places of detention for adults who do not have a state license to provide services to children.

Immigrant advocates asked a federal judge in California to block the rule from taking effect in October. McAlinen said that if this rule is upheld in court, the administration will no longer be forced to release families after an 21-day detention period.

“After the rules of Flores are finally considered and put into effect, this period will be reduced, and this will be another option for managing affairs,” he said. “We will keep them together in appropriate conditions during the immigration process.”

Photo: Facebook /The White House

Meanwhile, requiring families to wait in Mexico serves as a way to “keep families together, not in custody,” he said.

The massive return of families to Mexico is cause for concern. Recent reports have shown that migrants sent back to Mexico in accordance with this policy have been robbed, abducted for ransom, raped, tortured and killed. Meanwhile, the Department of State issued travel warnings for U.S. citizens traveling through areas along the border where migrants tend to expect.

Mexico has established procedures for processing asylum seekers. However, they do not have the resources to handle immigrants in the quantities that are currently arriving, as the 48 refugee commission has a total of employees throughout the country.

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Mexico is also unable to offer humanitarian assistance to the masses of immigrants. Asylum seekers awaiting a decision on their asylum applications in Mexico have recently encountered overcrowded asylums, a small job prospect and difficulties finding lawyers, without which their asylum cases will almost certainly be doomed to failure.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnik, a political analyst at the American Immigration Council, said in an interview that he is not sure that the United States even has the means to send families back to Mexico in the quantities currently found on the southern border.

He said that the United States is returning migrants to Mexico under the program of Protocols for the Protection of Migrants at a rate of about 3000 per week, which will not even cover more than 25 000 families arrested on the southern border in August.

Reichlin-Melnik also noted that the policy does not take into account the increase in the number of Mexican families arriving at the border who cannot be returned to Mexico under the terms of the Protocol for the Protection of Migrants. In August of this year, more than 4300 Mexican families were arrested on the southern border, which is almost twice as much as last year. It is unclear whether they will continue to linger in the United States.

“Again, the secretary refuses to interact with the facts on the ground and repeats these conversations at a high level, not recognizing the harm that the Protocols for the Protection of Migrants do to people across the border,” Reichlin-Melnik said.

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