Nearly all U.S. states have declared an emergency. Six northern California counties have ordered residents to go into “shelter in place.” Bars and restaurants have severely scaled back service, or shut down entirely. People everywhere are being urged to practice social distancing, avoid crowds of 10 or more, and stay home as much as possible during this coronavirus public health crisis. Yet, the Trump administration is risking the health of asylum-seekers and their children, as well as immigration court staffers, by refusing to shut down immigration court hearings for now.
“Wearing face masks, about 30 asylum seekers who had been waiting in Mexico were escorted by authorities into a federal building in El Paso, Texas, some carrying children,” The AP said. “They reported, as instructed, to a border crossing at 4 a.m. Monday and were driven to the court in white vans. Journalists were barred from the courtroom on the grounds that it was too crowded. A lawyer who attended said the judge appeared by video conference, and few, if any migrants wore masks once the hearing began.”
While the Justice Department has halted certain immigration court hearings for now, this change doesn’t apply to asylum-seekers who have been forced to wait out their cases in Mexico under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy, and who are still being ordered to attend crowded hearings. “The number of people on a typical day in immigration court exceeds 50, said Elise Wilkinson, a Houston-area immigration attorney,” the AP continued. “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday recommended that the public avoid gatherings larger than 10 people over the next 15 days.”
“An unprecedented alliance” of immigration attorneys, immigration judges, and federal prosecutors have urged the Executive Office of Immigration Review to shut down the nearly 70 immigration courts spread out across the country, writing “Our nation is currently in the throes of a historic global pandemic. The Department of Justice’s current response to the COVID-19 pandemic and its spread is insufficient and not premised on transparent scientific information. The DOJ is failing to meet its obligations to ensure a safe and healthy environment within our Immigration Courts.”
But, even if these asylum-seekers weren’t required to go to court for now, the administration is still keeping them in a dire situation. Some families are currently living in Mexican shelters in “abysmal” conditions, immigration attorney Taylor Levy told USA Today. Roughly 2,500 others are living in a squalid border camp where “There is no running water,” and “If they get sick, and many of them do, they see a doctor in a structure the size of port-a-potty,” visiting Illinois Rep. Chuy García said in January. Public health expert Helen Perry told USA Today half of the illnesses her organization Global Response Management sees there are respiratory-related. “A coronavirus outbreak would be devastating and impossible to control, she said.”
Elissa Steglich of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School also stressed to USA Today the difficulty of contacting asylum-seekers who have been scattered into Mexico by the administration about rescheduled court dates. This is difficulty worsened by U.S. officials themselves: Last year, BuzzFeed News reported some border officials had listed asylum-seekers’ street addresses as “Facebook” on government forms critical to their cases. The Los Angeles Times reported last year that other officers had also written “known address,” or something close to that, instead of the required address.
This entire humanitarian crisis could have been avoided if the U.S. had allowed asylum-seekers to pursue their cases in the U.S., in freedom, as has been done historically. Instead, the administration has chosen to endanger their lives by not just forcing them to wait out their cases in dangerous regions of Mexico, but also by forcing them to live in a camp and go to crowded hearings during a public health crisis. The cruelty, as always, is intentional: as the public everywhere pleads with the administration to act urgently on the coronavirus crisis, it’s also continuing to send mass deportation agents out to terrorize communities.