A delegation of congressional members led by Hispanic Caucus chair Joaquin Castro and Rep. Filemon Vela, both from Texas, traveled to the southern border on Friday to meet with asylum-seekers, including children, who was been forced to wait in Mexico under inhumane and illegal Trump administration policy. “What we saw today,” Rep. Grace Napolitano wrote in a tweet, “was shocking to say the least.”
Members tweeted images from the squalid camp where an estimated 2,000 asylum-seekers returned to Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, or Remain in Mexico, stay while waiting out their U.S. immigration court dates. Roughly 60,000 asylum-seekers have been kicked out of the U.S. since the start of the policy a year ago, and “Thousands of families are being forced to wait in dangerous border towns in Mexico as they go through the asylum process, which can take months,” members said in statement.
While local groups have sought to ramp up aid like nutritious food, families are living outdoors with not much more than a tent to protect them from from cold weather and there’s one lone full-time doctor, himself an asylum-seeker, to assist families. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon tweeted that she met one family whose baby is sick but don’t have their court date for another five months. “It is just unacceptable and heartbreaking,” she continued. “We need to do everything we can to end the squalor in which these people are living.”
In just one stunning development, members said Customs and Border Protection officials had returned a child with a heart defect and Down’s Syndrome even though she’s supposed to be exempt from the policy. “It took five members of Congress to stay behind and say, why is this child not being allowed? She should not be a part of MPP, she’s a vulnerable population,” California Rep. Nanette Barragán said in a video.
“After some time, we were able to get her through, and we hear just now, that CBP has said she will be paroled into the U.S.,” she continued. “She has medical care waiting for her in Philadelphia at Children’s Hospital. We’re thankful for the doctors, but it shouldn’t take five members of Congress to be here, to make sure that our vulnerable populations—children that are six years old with heart conditions—can get through, especially if they have care waiting for them. They should not be part of MPP.”
The delegation’s visit is the latest part of House Democrats’ ongoing investigation into the Remain in Mexico policy, which has been denounced by asylum officers themselves as “illegal,” “immoral,” and “the basis for human rights abuses on behalf of our nation.” In announcing an investigation this week, the House Judiciary said Remain in Mexico “is a dangerously flawed policy that threatens the health and safety of legitimate asylum seekers—including women, children, and families—and should be abandoned.”
None of this policy needs to be happening. Asylum-seeking families allowed into the U.S. shouldn’t be detained either, and in fact alternatives to detention, like the Family Case Management Program, have shown overwhelming success in the past. The Trump administration, however, shut down the Obama era program in 2017. Remain in Mexico needs to end—and these families deserve a fair shot. “Let them make their case,” Bonamici said. “Bring back the Family Case Management Program in the United States, so these wonderful families can be safe.”
