Homeland Security says that more than 1,600 asylum-seekers have been forcibly returned to Mexico under the inhumane Trump administration policy that forces vulnerable people to wait out their asylum cases in a process that some immigrant rights advocates have described as a logistical nightmare.
Under “Migrant Protection Protocols,” or Remain in Mexico, people are forced to wait in Mexico for weeks just to begin their asylum process, with no consideration for their personal safety, where they will live, or even if they’ll be aware of changes in their court dates. “DHS prosecutors didn’t have an answer when one immigration judge asked how they could contact people in Mexico to tell them the new date,” Vox reported last month.
A group of asylum-seekers sued the administration over the policy, with a federal judge issuing an order that temporarily halted the policy. “The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals, however, put the order on hold, allowing the policy to temporarily continue,” CNN reports, and last week it heard arguments in the case.
”The three-judge panel—made up of two judges appointed by Democratic presidents and one appointed by a Republican—grappled with whether the policy should be allowed to continue, diving into technical matters and raising concerns about the process itself without providing much indication about where they stood overall,” CNN continued.
The right thing to do would be to let people fleeing violence and persecution fight out their cases here, and not in detention, but in proven alternatives that work and respect the dignity of these families. But for an administration that has taken illegal steps to stomp on the right to ask for asylum, including the president reportedly instructing border officials to violate the law, even dignity is apparently too much of an ask.