The advocacy group Round Table of Former Immigration Judges is calling for an end to U.S. policy forcing tens of thousands of asylum-seekers to wait for their immigration court dates in Mexico, saying in a blistering statement, “The administration has systematically attacked due process in the immigration court system through new rules, memoranda, and policies. However, the largest assault to due process is the Migrant Protection Protocols program.”
The former judges say that MPP, also known as Remain in Mexico, “prevents access to the court, to counsel, and to resources refugees need to effectively present their cases.” But, they continue, ”The limitations on due process in MPP are not incidental to the program, they are intentional.” Asylum-seekers have struggled to get legal help in Mexico as attorneys who have gone to the so-called immigration tent courts at the border have been blocked by U.S. officials. “It’s impossible to overstate how violating this is for the rights of asylum-seekers,” Karla Vargas of the Texas Civil Rights Project told Texas Monthly last September.
“In addition to the elimination of due process in MPP,” the group continued, “the government is putting vulnerable refugees in grave danger. Refugees are forced to wait in dangerous border towns in Mexico without any protection or resources. As with the elimination of due process, the state created danger generated by MPP is intentional. It is part of the government’s attempt to eliminate access to asylum.”
Doug Stephens, an asylum officer who resigned from his job rather than help implement this policy, said in December that it was “clearly designed to make individuals fail and send everyone back without really giving them a fair shot.” He recalled one interview in which “it seemed clear that someone had a claim to being able to stay in the United States by showing that they would be harmed in Mexico based on their nationality or their status as a member in a particular social group.” But he said that when he checked with a superior “to see if we could use that to let them stay in the United States, and I was told, flat-out, ‘no.’”
During a House panel the month before that, Michael Knowles, an asylum officer and president of a union representing thousands of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees, told legislators that asylum officers who dared express displeasure at violating asylum law were threatened. “We're just told to carry it out, and, 'If you don't like it, you can go work somewhere else,’” he said.
Remain in Mexico must end, the former immigration judges say, joining legislators, advocates, and a large number of legal, faith-based, and community organizations that have previously spoken out. “The Round Table of Former Immigration Judges calls for the elimination of MPP immediately, demands that the administration take efforts to locate the thousands of individuals who were prevented from appearing at their hearings, and that all in absentia removal orders in MPP cases be rescinded sua sponte.”