Stuck in Mexico Due to Trump’s Policy, Asylum Seekers Face a Dangerous Wait

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico - A mother and her 3-year-old from Honduras grew so frustrated waiting in Mexico that they tried crossing the Rio Grande, in an area where migrants usually pass through to avoid waiting in Mexico. They drowned.Vilma Xiomara Mendoza, 20, a migrant from the indigenous region in Guatemala known as Baja Verapaz, crossed into the U.S. on the Fourth of July to make a claim for asylum. On that same day, she was sent back to Mexico by Border Patrol officials. Frustrated by the long wait for her immigration court hearing and frightened by the violence in one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities, she tried swimming alone across a canal to reach the U.S. She, too, died.Here at the border, recent stories of heartbreak are the unintended consequence of U.S. policies like the Migration Protection Protocol, also known as Remain in Mexico, and the crackdown on immigrants headed to the U.S. by Mexico’s national guard. In the past, the vast majority of migrants were single adults coming to the U.S. to work. Now, the largest group is Central American families seeking asylum. The Trump administration has said its policies are aimed at stemming the flow of migrants who it says are gaming the asylum system and overwhelming authorities along the border. “The asylum program is a scam,” President Donald J. Trump has said.Under Remain in Mexico, asylum seekers are returned to Mexico to await their court dates in the U.S. The policy “is sending shock waves among migrants, provoking frustration, desperation and bad decisions because there’s such a lack of information and they feel they’ve run out of options,” said Tekandi Paniagua, Guatemala’s Consul General in Del Rio.Between January and August of this year, 255 migrants died along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Missing Migrants Project, which monitors migration tragedies as part of the U.N.-affiliated intergovernmental International Organization for Migration. In all of last year, 308 died, according to the report. Migrant rights advocates, U.S. congressional critics and top authorities from countries such as Guatemala say farming out the U.S. asylum system to Mexico is a flawed policy that means the U.S. is contributing to a rising number of tragedies. In addition to sending asylum seekers back to Mexico -- a nation wracked by drug violence with an astronomical murder rate -- at the behest of the U.S. governments, 21,000 Mexican national guardsmen have formed a human wall along the southern and northern border to halt the flow of migrants seeking to make claims for asylum.  Continue reading...

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