Thread: The First Asylum-Seeking Families Sent Back To Mexico

The Trump Administration Has Sent The First Asylum-Seeking Families Back To Mexico

Five families, including 10 children, were returned as part of the administration's new plans to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico.

Adolfo FloresBuzzFeed News Reporter
Last updated on February 14, 2019, at 12:39 p.m. ET
Posted on February 14, 2019, at 11:35 a.m. ET


[IMG]https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2019-02/14/11/asset/buzzfeed-prod-web-05/sub-buzz-9577-1550161657-1.jpg?downsize=1100:*&output-format=auto&output-quality=auto[/IMG]
Hans-maximo Musielik / AP

The first asylum-seeking Central American families were sent back to Mexico from the US on Wednesday. The move is the latest in the Trump administration's plan to force migrants to wait in Mexico while their immigration cases are processed, according to a Mexican official.

The five families sent back to Tijuana, Mexico, were made up of four women, one couple, and 10 children, said the official, who was not authorized to speak to the press about the returned families. The families were returned to Mexico at the El Chaparral pedestrian border crossing.

Initially only single adults were being sent back to Mexico from the US as part of the Trump administration's Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) policy. It's the latest move by the Trump administration to deter migrants, including asylum seekers, from entering the country.

On Feb. 1, a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told reporters that up until then, the people returned to Mexico under MPP have not included families. However, they said they would be moving to remove families "very soon" and were looking to expand it beyond the San Diego-Tijuana border.

"This is a way to make sure families stay together through the duration of their immigration proceedings," the official said.

The head of Mexico's immigration enforcement agency had previously said Mexico wouldn't accept underage migrants as part of the program, and that it wouldn't extend the policy beyond the El Chaparral pedestrian border crossing in Tijuana.

The unprecedented decision to force US asylum seekers to wait in Mexico has been heavily criticized by immigrant advocates on both sides of the border. Part of their concerns are the dangers migrants face in Mexican border communities.

Tijuana, which has hundreds of asylum seekers waiting for their turn to request asylum in the US, is one of the deadliest cities in the world with more than 2,500 homicides last year, a record for the border city. The dangers young migrants face at the border were highlighted in December when two teenage boys from Honduras who traveled with the caravan to Tijuana were killed in a robbery.

A DHS fact sheet said a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) gives them the authority to return immigrants back to Mexico. However, the administration is likely to be challenged in court over it's decision to send back asylum seekers.

The asylum seekers will be able to return to the US to attend their immigration court hearings, officials said in a statement. It could be months or years before their cases are adjudicated.

The US immigration court backlog, which has continued to ballon under the Trump administration, has grown to more than 809,000 cases, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...asylum-seeking

Hear their cases via SKYPE...do not bring them back to our soil!

Mexico needs to put them on buses back home!

We do not want them here!

First asylum seekers from Central America returned to Mexico 1/29/19

Originally Posted by JohnDoe2

Five families, including 10 children, were returned as part of the administration's new plans to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico.

How long before we read----336 illegals walked around the gate and walked up to BP, of those 336 were 6 who had been sent to remain in Mexico just 15 days ago---or will they just ignore that part of the report?

U.S. sends first families to Mexico to await asylum, rights groups sue


By Lizbeth Diaz and Mica Rosenberg
,Reuters•February 14, 2019

FILE PHOTO: Police escort a bus bound to Monterrey, transporting Mexican migrants deported from the United States, as it leaves a bus station in Reynosa, Mexico January 11, 2019. Picture taken January 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tomas Bravo More

By Lizbeth Diaz and Mica Rosenberg

MEXICO CITY/NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States began sending Central American families seeking asylum back to Mexico this week, a Mexican immigration source said on Thursday, while U.S. human rights groups sued the Trump administration, saying the policy puts migrants in danger.

Five families with a total of 16 people, including children from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, arrived in the Mexican border city of Tijuana on Wednesday, according to a person who works in migration for the Mexican government who asked not to be named.

In late January, the United States began sending non-Mexican migrants to Mexico to wait as their asylum requests are processed in U.S. immigration courts, in a program called Migrant Protection Protocols. But until this week, only individual adults had been sent back, not children in family groups

Rights groups say the program endangers asylum seekers by forcing them to remain in regions of Mexico experiencing record levels of violence.

"Both the U.S. and Mexican governments know that the border area is unsafe for women and children," Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission (WRC), said in a statement of the decision to return the families to Mexico.

"The U.S. government knows full well that asylum-seeking families are no threat to this nation."

Sixty-three people have returned to Mexico so far under the program, the government source said.

Two shelters in Tijuana said they had received the families. They asked not to be named to avoid revealing their location.

The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups filed a lawsuit on behalf of 11 anonymous asylum seekers on Thursday. The groups asked a U.S. judge to revoke the policy and order the government to bring the migrants back to the United States while their cases are processed.

The 11 asylum seekers from Central America were returned to Mexico on Jan. 30 to wait out their immigration cases, and now fear for their lives, according to the complaint.

The plaintiffs include a lesbian woman who said she was raped because of her sexual orientation and was forced to flee Honduras after her partner's family threatened to kill them.

The lawsuit alleges the policy endangers migrants and violates U.S. immigration and administrative law, as well as universal norms of international law.

In another sign of the political tension over immigration, the White House on Thursday said U.S. President Donald Trump will declare a national emergency to try to obtain funds for his promised wall on the Mexican border when he signs a bill to avert another government shutdown.

Mexico's National Migration Institute and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/groups-su...211843036.html