The Daily Beast
Biden’s end to “stay in Mexico” was too late for 41,247 migrants
Paul Ratje / GettyThe last residents of the Matamoros refugee camp in Mexico crossed the border with the United States on March 5 to apply for asylum. Migrants – many of them Central Americans fleeing endemic violence, poverty and corruption – will be allowed to remain in the United States as their cases go through the immigration court system. The exodus from the Matamoros camp, which has housed more than 2,500 asylum seekers, marks the end of a Trump-era policy called Protocols for the Protection of Migrants. Commonly known as “Staying in Mexico,” the January 2019 policy forced 71,000 migrants detained along the United States’ border with Mexico to return to Mexico to apply for asylum and wait many months while their claims were processed. The Trump administration has claimed protection for migrants. The protocols ensured a “safe and orderly process”. But this created a refugee crisis in Mexico, whose border cities were not equipped to shelter, feed and protect tens of thousands of refugees. Matamoros is one of the many Catholic camps and shelters set up. On President Joe Biden’s first day in office, the Department of Homeland Security suspended Migrant Protection Protocols and, at the end of February, asylum seekers were being selected for COVID-19 and authorized to enter the United States. The move brought enormous relief among the more than 15,000 migrants at that point trapped in camps in northern Mexico. But the border was reopened too late for most of the 41,247 migrants whose cases were dismissed while they “remained in Mexico”. Reform, but hopeful ones say they were burned before the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, where I research immigration enforcement, collect and analyze government records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. The records we obtained from the Department of Justice show that 71,036 cases of asylum were registered in Mexico under the Protocols for the Protection of Migrants, which lasted from January 2019 until January 2021. To date, 41,888 cases have been concluded or closed. Of these, only 641 people received asylum or shelter in the United States, an approval rate of 1.5%. In 2017, on the other hand, 40 percent of asylum seekers had their requests granted by a U.S. immigration judge. Of the 41,888 cases concluded under the Migrant Protection Protocols, 32,659 asylum seekers received an order for deportation from an immigration judge, although they were not physically in the United States. Most of them – 27,898 – received deportation orders because they did not attend the immigration court hearing on the American side of the border. There are many reasons why migrants waiting in Mexico may not have reached the immigration court. One is the dangers of northern Mexico, where drug cartels and organized crime pursue vulnerable migrants. Matamoros is located in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, where rape, torture and kidnapping are so widespread that the US State Department has a “do not travel” notice in the state. Asylum seekers carry drinking water distributed in a migrant camp on the United States’ border with Mexico on February 23, 2021. John Moore / Getty The non-profit organization Human Rights First has documented 1,544 cases of asylum seekers who have been victims of violence while they waited in Mexico. In one case, Customs and Border Protection returned a Salvadoran family to Mexico in May 2019, despite their expressed fear. In November 2019, the father was stabbed to death in Tijuana, leaving his wife and two children behind. “I told the judge that I feared for my children because we were in a horrible, horrible place, and we didn’t feel safe here,” said his widow to the Telemundo media. Another victim was a Honduran woman from the Garifuna Afro-Caribbean minority, who was kidnapped and raped in the city of Juárez while “remaining in Mexico”. an asylum seeker from Guatemala, who was kidnapped by a cartel five hours after he was sent back to Mexico in 2019. David escaped, but as the cartel had taken over his paperwork, making an asylum application became virtually impossible. Trump immigration policies – but not immediately The lack of legal advice is another reason why migrants waiting in Mexico may not have attended their hearings in U.S. courts or may have been denied asylum and issued an order for deportation. Immigrants with a lawyer are twice as likely to win their cases and 99% of asylum seekers with an immigration lawyer attend all immigration court hearings. But it was much more difficult to get a U.S. immigration lawyer in Tamaulipas, Mexico, than in Texas in 2019. In fiscal 2020, only 14 The percentage of migrants forced to “stay in Mexico” found an immigration lawyer, in compared to 80 percent of asylum cases for migrants within the United States. Without a lawyer, communicating with the American judicial system across an international border while living in a camp has become an almost insurmountable barrier. For example, migrants told BuzzFeed News that the US Department of Immigration and Customs often filled out incomplete or inaccurate paperwork, sometimes listing “Facebook” as the migrants’ physical address. And without a lawyer, it was almost impossible for these migrants to receive crucial court notices. “Staying in Mexico” made it almost impossible for asylum seekers to find safety in the United States. But the asylum process can have profoundly uneven results – regardless of who sits in the White House. The results of asylum are often determined both by the asylum officer or immigration judge who decides the case and on the merits. For example, immigration judges in Atlanta reject, on average, 97% of asylum cases, while those in New York City approve, on average, 74%. Even though El Salvador and Honduras are among the top five countries in the world in violent deaths, courts usually deny more than 80 percent of asylum cases in those countries, largely because the US government has been reluctant to acknowledge gang persecution and domestic violence as reasons for asylum. Political and economic instability in Central America is also driving children to flee the region. In the past two weeks, 3,200 unaccompanied minors have reached the US-Mexico border. “Staying in Mexico” gave asylum seekers a difficult choice: stay and hope to survive or lose their chance, however small, of a new life. Luck and perseverance paid off for the nearly 15,000 migrants who are now able to seek their asylum applications in the relative security of the United States. But for everyone else, there is no second chance. Austen Kocher is an associate professor of research at the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top news in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.