Under U.S. law, asylum-seekers can legally petition for protections at U.S. ports of entry. “Immigration officials,” writes the American Immigration Council (AIC), “are required to admit any individual who presents at a port of entry and states either a fear of return to their country, or a desire to apply for asylum.” But Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have a history of violating this enshrined law protecting the most vulnerable, and under Donald Trump, they have been emboldened:
One recent case of Central American asylum seekers being turned back after they entered U.S. territory, but before they had the opportunity to apply for asylum at the border checkpoint, was first reported by Texas Monthly. In that case, Ruben Garcia, founder of Annunciation House, a nonprofit that helps immigrants and refugees in El Paso, said CBP agents simply told certain border-crossers they couldn’t receive them. That didn’t allow the immigrants to get on U.S. soil and tell them of their fears and need for asylum, he said.
“If you look indigenous and you look Central American, they will stop you,” Garcia told The Dallas Morning News. “They never ask why they are coming. They just say we can’t receive you.”
According to Edgar Saldivar, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Texas, “complaints about asylum-seekers not being allowed to ask for refuge are received ‘multiple times and on a daily basis.’” There’s no doubt this blatant violation of U.S. law has been encouraged by Trump’s anti-immigrant policies. According to a repot from Human Rights Watch (HRW) last year, agents falsely told asylum-seekers that “Donald Trump just signed new laws saying there is no asylum for anyone” and that “Trump says we don’t have to let you in.”
Last year, civil rights groups sued the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), former DHS secretary and current White House chief of staff John Kelly, and other federal officials over the incidents, alleging that agents “used a range of tactics to deny people their right to state their fears of persecution and apply for asylum, including ‘misrepresentations, threats and intimidation, verbal abuse and physical force.’”
Two asylum seekers turned away included a Honduran mom and daughter who had been “repeatedly raped by MS-13 gang members.” But once at the border, agents denied them a chance to apply for asylum. “CBP has been emboldened by the anti-immigrant rhetoric around the election. They are flagrantly breaking the law,” said Al Otro Lado, a legal aid organization. “They have either been told, or believe, that there should be no more asylum seekers.” It’s a life-threatening problem that continues:
A group of a dozen people last Saturday was followed by Annunciation House staff and volunteers. Three got past the border and CFB officers and walked to the border checkpoint to make their asylum plea, but another nine Central Americans didn’t get past CFB officers who were on the bridge ahead of the border checkpoint, Garcia said.
Garcia said one sunburned Guatemalan woman holding her 10-month-old son in her arms who was identified only as Juana did manage to get across the international boundary line. “The supervisor says, ‘Take her in. She is already in,’ “ Garcia recalled.
Then, Juana told them, “I fear for my life,” Garcia said.
This comes as the administration is punishing families who do make it across the border by tearing kids from the arms of parents as a matter of official policy.
"Federal authorities are essentially disrupting our border existence, our way of life of people going back and forth to work, shop, visit relatives," said El Paso attorney Carlos Spector. "They're trying to deter asylum seekers, and at the same time threaten everyone else. The common denominator with this and everything we've been living is punishment, criminalization and now family separation as a deterrence."