Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, medical professionals, and legal advocates joined forces on Thursday to speak out in unison against harmful Trump administration policies targeting vulnerable families and obliterating the U.S. asylum system, including an inhumane and illegal program that has forced thousands of asylum-seekers, including children, to wait out their U.S. immigration court dates in dangerous and squalid conditions in Mexico.
“Last month marked one year since the Trump administration began enforcing its Remain in Mexico policy,” Hispanic Caucus chair Joaquin Castro said during a Washington, D.C. press conference. “In the last year, approximately 60,000 people seeking safety in our country have been turned away under this policy. They’ve been forced to wait months, living in shelters and tent camps … many migrants become sick while waiting, or can’t access legal services for their cases. That is the point. That’s the purpose of Remain in Mexico, to deny these asylum-seekers due process and safety in the United States of America.”
Castro discussed a delegation of 17 Hispanic Caucus members and House Democrats who recently visited one large camp where asylum-seekers subject to Remain in Mexico have been living. During that visit, California Rep. Nanette Barragán condemned U.S. officials’ initial refusal to allow a child with a heart defect and Down syndrome to pass through even though she’s supposed to be exempt from Remain in Mexico. The child, a six-year-old Central American girl, was allowed through only after persistence from legislators and advocates.
“We had a good resolution today,” Barragán continued at the time, “but it shouldn’t take five members of Congress to stay behind, to advocate.” During the Thursday press conference, the legislators and advocates continued to expose the suffering of families and blatant violation of asylum law under the Trump administration.
“This policy is a violation of the legal rights and human rights of people who are seeking refuge,” Illinois Rep. Chuy García said in Spanish. “For that reason this morning we’re here shining a light on the intolerable, inhumane conditions existing at the border, because that’s the promise we made to migrants we spoke with and who were sharing their suffering at our nation’s border.” In a firsthand account written after his visit to the camp, García urged Americans to not look away from the suffering created by the U.S. “I will not forget them. WE must not forget them. The very heart of our nation is at stake.”
On Twitter, numerous legislators further noted the human costs of these anti-asylum, anti-family policies. “According to Human Rights First, Remain in Mexico has led to more than 600 cases of rape, abduction or assault and over 100 kidnappings,” Barragán tweeted. But Human Rights First cautioned in that report “our count is only the tip of the iceberg, as the overwhelming majority of returned individuals have not spoken with human rights investigators or journalists. The actual number of attacks is certainly much higher.”
“Recently documented attacks on those returned to Mexico through MPP include: a Salvadoran asylum-seeker murdered in Tijuana in November 2019 after DHS returned him there, an asylum-seeking father tortured in front of his 3-year-old son during their kidnapping ordeal in Reynosa, and a young Cuban asylum seeker raped in Mexico after being returned by DHS to Matamoros,” Human Rights First continued.
Trump officials have also sought to effectively end the U.S. asylum system by deporting some from Honduras and El Salvador to Guatemala under a so-called safe-third-country agreement, in a process that advocates who have sued the administration over the policy have called “a deadly game of musical chairs that leaves desperate refugees without a safe haven, in violation of U.S. and international law.” Officials have gone forward with this policy knowing they’re deporting vulnerable people, including children, back to danger.
“Hundreds, if not thousands, of people are living in inhumane conditions right on the other side of the border in Matamoros,” Castro continued during the Thursday press conference. “There are times when the river overflows there because of heavy rain, and they’re forced to live and sleep in mud. This is shameful. These are conditions that people legally seeking asylum and refuge in the United States should not have to bear. These are human beings.”