Immigrant rights advocates, legal service providers, and faith leaders were among those who filled immigration court hearings on Wednesday to mark the one year anniversary of the implementation of Remain in Mexico, a Trump administration policy that hasn’t just been a humanitarian disaster, but a due process disaster as well.
Under the policy, officially called Migrant Protection Protocols, asylum-seekers appear in front of an immigration judge who isn’t even there in person, but rather appearing via video feed. Many families are forced to go to their court dates without any legal representation at all. Seeking to continue exposing this cruel policy, advocates sat in on immigration court hearings in California and Texas to bear witness.
In California, advocacy group Immigrant Defenders tweeted that of the more than three dozen people expected in court in the morning, only one had an attorney. The afternoon appeared to be even more dire—only four of the more than 100 asylum-seekers scheduled had legal representation. The judge, the group said, seemed “surprised” to see volunteers from the organization and human rights group. “He is used to doing these hearings in the shadows.”
Those were the asylum-seekers who were able to actually make it to court. Some may have missed their dates because the paperwork they were given by the U.S. had intentional errors, others perhaps because they were dumped by the U.S. in a dangerous region and couldn’t make it back to a U.S. port of entry for their court date. What is clear, is that if they miss their court date, they could lose their case.
Families are having to appear while afraid, traumatized from the experiences that led them to seek asylum, and in the dark about how the complicated U.S. asylum system works.
In Texas, immigrant rights advocate Juan Escalante tweeted that one family was unable to appear for unknown reasons but they did have an attorney there who succeeded in urging the court to reschedule to another day. “Had they not had an attorney,” Escalante tweeted, “then the clients would’ve been ordered removed in absentia.”
Roughly 60,000 asylum-seekers have been forced to Mexico under the policy, 2,500 to an inhumane border camp in Matamoros. Another advocate who sat in on a hearing, Julissa Arce Raya, tweeted that one Cuban man told a judge he’d rather be in detention than have to stay in a border camp. “No one should have to prefer cruel detention camps over their current situation,” tweeted Families Belong Together.
This entire policy needs to end, and that’s not just the opinion of advocates who sat in on the hearings on Wednesday, but also the very immigration judges who once sat at these benches. In a statement, advocacy group Round Table of Former Immigration Judges called on officials to end Remain in Mexico, saying “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.”