Donald Trump’s policy of forcing asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while they wait for immigration hearings in the U.S. is endangering their lives, the asylum officers who screen migrants said in a court filing Wednesday. Trump’s policy is forcing “widespread violation” of international and federal law, according to the officers’ union, and that’s “something that they did not sign up to do when they decided to become asylum and refugee officers for the United States government.”
The union filed a friend of the court brief in a case brought by the ACLU and other groups seeking to end Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program, which the brief says is definitely not about protection. “Mexico is simply not safe for Central American asylum seekers,” the asylum officers object, especially for women, LGBTQ people, and indigenous people. And sending asylum-seekers to Mexico is not necessary, “as our immigration system has the foundation and agility necessary to deal with the flow of migrants through our Southern Border.”
This is a powerful statement from the officers who hear directly from asylum-seekers every day, hearing what they’re fleeing, what they’re afraid of, why they need to come to the U.S. In their brief asking the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit to halt the program, they express a strong sense of mission—and of the violation of that mission by the Trump administration. “Asylum officers are duty bound to protect vulnerable asylum seekers from persecution,” the brief says. “They should not be forced to honor departmental directives that are fundamentally contrary to the moral fabric of our Nation and our international and domestic legal obligations.”