At least 11 migrant women have been left in Mexican border cities without a birth certificate for their newborn days-old American citizens since March last year, an investigation by the Fuller Project and the Guardian found.
Based on several conversations with lawyers working with border asylum seekers and a review of hospital records and legal documents, several newborn American citizens were moved to Mexico after their mothers were subjected to a Trump-era border ban. that the Biden-Harris government was slow to terminate.
Defenders suspect that the real number of such cases may be higher because the vast majority of these quick “evictions”, as the government calls them, occurred out of the public eye and without the involvement of lawyers.
This recent pattern of removal of American citizens without birth certificates has occurred in the context of immigration policies and practices in recent years that have hurt women and children who are already vulnerable, say advocates and lawyers.
The “zero tolerance” policy of former President Donald Trump’s government, which resulted in more than 5,000 children being separated from their parents, and the increase in prolonged detention of children were the most visible policies, but represented only the tip of the iceberg. Homeland security agencies also detained 4,600 pregnant women between 2016 and 2018, with the number increasing by 52% between those two years. Several detained women also complained about abortions and intrusive medical procedures.
Hélène *, a 23-year-old woman from Haiti, was nine months pregnant when she crossed to the United States in July 2020. She was in the custody of the U.S. border patrol when her purse broke. Agency officials transported her to a local hospital in Chula Vista, California, to give birth. She was happy when her daughter was born – that everything went well, she told the Fuller Project and the Guardian in a telephone conversation through a translator.
Three days later, they were discharged. Hélène remembers thinking that she would be released to the family and would be allowed to pursue her asylum case, she said. But about 25 minutes later, she was back in Mexico, right on the border she arrived a few days ago, pregnant in the height of summer, after a trip that lasted a month and three days. Panicking, she started to cry. She pleaded in Spanish to the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers who took her across the border. She knew that they understood, she says. The police did not respond.
They left it across the San Diego-Tijuana border, by the side of the road. She had no idea what to do or where to go. She also lacked her newborn’s birth certificate. When night fell, she and the baby slept right there on the street, across from security.
Hélène was subject to Title 42, an order from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention issued during the start of federal government actions against the Covid-19 pandemic last March. The rule allowed CBP officials to summarily “expel” all migrants who entered the United States without authorization, instead of allowing them to access the legal route to apply for protection, even those seeking asylum.
Rapid deportations have happened before at the border, but immigrants usually have the right to be examined for asylum applications and to see an immigration judge if they are likely to suffer damage when removed. Title 42 allows the authorities to summarily reject people. However, officials can exempt people on a case-by-case basis and allow entry in case of humanitarian considerations or public interest.
“Immigration [agencies have] the authority to prevent this from happening, but they refuse to do so, ”said Luis M Gonzalez, a lawyer for Jewish Family Services, who represented two cases in which migrant mothers and their newborn US citizens were expelled. “They are putting [the] lives of American citizens in danger. In this case, newborns. “
In fiscal year 2020, CBP reported that more than 200,000 evictions – including unaccompanied children – were refused under Title 42. In the first three months of fiscal 2021 alone, evictions have exceeded 190,000 to date. The Trump administration hailed Title 42 as “tremendously effective”.
On February 2, Joe Biden issued an executive order instructing his employees to “promptly review” Title 42, among other border policies. But defenders have was frustrated this most decisive and quick action has not yet been taken. On January 29, a panel of three judges composed of conservative judges appointed by Trump overturned a lower court decision to block the application of the rule to unaccompanied minors.
In a statement on Tuesday, Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrant Rights Project, called it “worrying” that Biden’s orders “did not include immediate action to rescind and undo more of the illegal and inhumane policies that this government inherited – and now owns ”.
A CBP spokesman, who asked for the information provided to be attributed to the agency, said the agency does not track how many women with newborn US citizens were subject to Title 42 and declined to answer further questions about such cases. “According to the policy, CBP does not comment on individual cases for reasons of privacy,” said the spokesman, who asked not to be identified by email.
They added: “Hospitals are responsible for providing birth certificates and CBP does not prevent individuals, regardless of immigration status, from acquiring birth certificates for children of American citizens.”
CBP also told a local reporter last year that at least one new mother from Honduras had the option of delivering her baby to US child services before returning to Mexico.
“This is not really a choice,” said Mitra Ebadolahi of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Diego, who along with Gonzalez of the Jewish Family Services, filed a complaint with the Inspector General’s Homeland Security Office last summer, calling for an investigation into the case of this Honduran mother.
The Honduran woman, her husband and her nine-year-old son, surrendered to border patrol agents last June, when the woman was nine months pregnant. The family had already returned to Mexico once in March, before Title 42 came into effect. During their stay in Mexico, they were threatened by armed men and “faced significant personal and material insecurity,” according to the July 10 complaint.
The woman, in severe pain from her late pregnancy, was taken to the hospital in Chula Vista, California, while her partner and son were expelled to Tijuana, Mexico, a city that the state department itself notes is a hot spot for targeted homicides and territorial wars. Two days later, the woman and her baby were also sent to Tijuana.
In another case represented by Gonzalez, a migrant woman who underwent a cesarean section, an invasive procedure that takes weeks to heal, was moved to Mexico the week after the surgery, along with her newborn. Gonzalez subsequently asked the authorities to allow both families to enter for humanitarian reasons.
“I know it’s cliché, but there is a very Kafka-esque quality to these processes that really cleans up humanity from the migrants’ experiences,” said Ebadolahi. “I have been struggling to find a language that properly conveys the damage and the damage done.”
Natalia *, 24, wakes up in her apartment in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, on the border with McAllen, Texas, where she gave birth to her daughter last April. Throughout the day, she takes care of the baby and the four-year-old son. If she can make it to America in the future, the first thing she wants to do is get her hands on her son’s birth certificate, which she didn’t have in early January, when she last spoke to the Guardian.
Problems may arise for mothers in their position: they may have difficulty vaccinating their children and registering for early childhood education, and they have problems obtaining food assistance and other government benefits, said Nicole Ramos, director of the Fronteira do Al Otro Lado, the organization of legal services for migrants.
“For all intents and purposes, this child is stateless, which will create a series of barriers … because they fail to establish citizenship,” said Ramos, who says his organization has already handled nine cases, including Hélène and Natalia.
In the past two years, camps have multiplied along the U.S. border with Mexico to house families trapped in limbo due to Trump’s border policies, which struggle to access basic services like food, drinking water and medical aid.
Human Rights First, a defense organization, has documented more than 1,300 cases of violent assaults, kidnappings, rapes and murders among migrants placed in the Migrants Protection Protocols – whereby migrants are forced to wait in Mexico for their court hearings. of the USA, now suspended during the pandemic.
During that time, border shelters in Mexico became more overburdened and hospitals more crowded. In desperation, many migrants tried to cross over to the United States again, only to be sent back under Title 42.
All of these policies put people who have already suffered significant trauma in repetitive cycles of harm, advocates say.
“It became very clear that the right to the protection of children’s lives has to do with protecting white Christian children … not about brown children born to immigrant mothers,” says Ramos.
On February 3, the Washington Post reported that Mexico had revealed, not publicly, that it would stop accepting Central American families expelled by the United States, but would continue to accept single adults.
In January, while Natalia’s daughter murmured and stirred, she said that she would like the Americans to know: border officials told her before her expulsion to Reynosa that her daughter would not get a birth certificate because she was the daughter of parents who they were migrants without rights. Their daughter would also have no rights, they said.
* The names were changed at the request of immigration lawyers, because both women are fleeing persecution.
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This story is published in partnership between the guardian and the Fuller Project. Tanvi Misra is a collaborative reporter for the Fuller Project, a nonprofit newsroom that reports on issues that affect women.