A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s inhumane and illegal policy forcing vulnerable asylum-seekers to return to Mexico to wait out their cases. Hundreds of people were forced out of the U.S. under “Migrant Protection Protocols” before Judge Richard Seeborg’s decision on Monday.
“The court strongly rejected the Trump administration’s unprecedented and illegal policy of forcing asylum seekers to return to Mexico without hearing their claims,” said Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “Try as it may, the Trump administration cannot simply ignore our laws in order to accomplish its goal of preventing people from seeking asylum in the United States.”
One of the 11 plaintiffs who sued the administration is “Ian Doe,” a former policer officer in Honduras who worked undercover to stop drug trafficking. But when his identity was revealed, he fled for his life. Drug traffickers then killed his brother, mistaking him for Ian. Ian was forcibly removed to Tijuana by immigration officials, where he has feared for his life.
More than 600 others have been kicked out under the policy, which represented yet another barbaric effort to stomp on the rights of asylum-seekers, who were returned to Mexico in a logistical nightmare. “One migrant told the immigration judge last week that he tried to call the lawyers on the sheet CBP provided, but none of them were picking up because he was calling from Mexico,” Vox’s Dara Lind reported.
In other instances, immigration court dates (which take place in the U.S.) have been rescheduled, but it hasn’t been clear whether asylum-seekers are being informed of those changes, Lind reports. “DHS prosecutors didn’t have an answer when one immigration judge asked how they could contact people in Mexico to tell them the new date.”
At least for now, this practice has been brought to a halt. “The decision will prevent incredibly vulnerable individuals from being trapped in dangerous conditions in Mexico, but it’s only a step in a much larger fight,” said Melissa Crow of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We are a nation of laws, and we cannot and will not allow elected officials to undermine those laws in an effort to implement an anti-immigrant agenda. We will keep fighting.”