The Trump administration’s inhumane and illegal “Migrant Protection Protocols” policy forcing tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico is anything but “protection,” because it’s not just causing vulnerable families to miss their immigration court dates, but it’s also intentionally endangering their lives.
In theory, the administration says, families forced out of the U.S. under Remain in Mexico are supposed to go to a port of entry on the date of their court hearing to wait to be escorted across by U.S. officials. In theory. Attorneys tell Vice that their clients have been forced to stay in areas so dangerous that cabs and other drivers refuse to go there, leaving them stranded and unable to get to a port of entry. Some families have been sent to areas that the U.S. tells Americans to avoid.
If they can find transportation, asylum-seekers with 7:30 AM hearings are expected to show up to a port of entry three hours early, and attorneys say some families are being tracked during that time. Not by officials making sure they make it to their hearings, nope, but by cartels looking for vulnerable people to shake down. “You're telling me the cartels aren't watching that port of entry at 4 o’clock in the morning? That's ridiculous,” said attorney Kara Lynum.
Attorney Christina Brown said her client was kidnapped shortly after being sent to Mexico, and had her paperwork with all her information taken. “She has a court date coming up, and the person who kidnapped her knows when it is,” she said. “She's so afraid to even present at the port of entry because they have her information. She's terrified that they will be there waiting for her at the port of entry when she goes and that she won't make it to court.”
“Some migrants forced to wait in Mexico are missing hearings because of clerical errors,” Vice reports. “Hearing notices have had the wrong address on them, and sometimes they’re given contradictory instructions about where to show up before their hearings.” Attorneys have said that U.S. agents have listed “Facebook” as an address at which to inform asylum-seekers of court date changes. “It's unclear how [Homeland Security] officials would contact an immigrant via social media,” BuzzFeed News reports, and if an asylum-seeker misses their court date, they can lose their case.
During one Wednesday earlier this month at a kangaroo “tent court” in Laredo, Texas—where both press and public are blocked from entering to observe immigration court proceedings that are usually open elsewhere—only 16 of the 56 asylum-seekers scheduled to appear that day made it. Of the 40 who didn’t appear for one reason or another, 30 “were ordered deported in absentia” by an immigration judge appearing via video feed 150 miles away in San Antonio.
Vice noted, “DHS and the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that oversees the nation’s immigration courts, didn’t respond to VICE News' request for comment.” The president’s toadies have been trying to shield his criminal ass from accountability by claiming that “impeachment is a kangaroo court,” but the true kangaroo courts are the ones he’s created, including the wretched, tent-covered ones at the border, where justice is nowhere to be found.