The Trump administration marked the one year anniversary of the official implementation of inhumane and illegal anti-asylum policy not by ending it, as it should be, but by expanding it. Officials announced on Wednesday that Brazilian nationals are the latest group of asylum-seekers who will be forced to wait for their immigration court dates in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols policy, or Remain in Mexico.
The policy’s expansion—which has now forced out as many as 62,000 asylum-seekers—was met with immediate criticism and disbelief from advocates and policy experts. “It's quite possible that there are ZERO Portugese-speaking immigration attorneys in El Paso, where DHS just started sending asylum seekers to wait in Ciudad Juárez,” tweeted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy counsel at American Immigration Council. “The entire shelter system is set up for Spanish-speakers. What they hell are they supposed to do for months?” An answer to that is, the administration just doesn't give a shit.
The fact is that Remain in Mexico has been a humanitarian and due process nightmare. Advocates who sat in on immigration court hearings this week for asylum-seekers subject to the policy noted that only five of the nearly 150 people scheduled to come in on Wednesday had legal representation. Five. The judge, advocacy groups Immigration Defenders and Human Rights First said, seemed “surprised” to see volunteers sitting in his courtroom. “He is used to doing these hearings in the shadows,” the groups said.
This should not be the norm for anyone in the immigration court system, and the first step to restoring and bringing more fairness to the U.S. asylum system is to immediately terminate this policy, advocacy group Round Table of Former Immigration Judges said this week in a 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.”
Nearly two dozen legal, faith-based, humanitarian, and community organizations that have assisted asylum-seekers abandoned by the U.S. similarly called for the program’s termination this week, saying “We have been shocked to hear U.S. officials assert that this program is a ‘success,’ pointing to a drop in the numbers approaching the U.S. border. Far from being a success, this program is a humanitarian, legal and due process catastrophe.”
One official who in particular is just tickled about Remain in Mexico is acting Department of Homeland Security Deputy Sec. Ken Cuccinelli. In a series of tweets that merited the deletion of his account, he wrote that the expansion to include “Illegal Brazilians” was “super-helpful,” because that’s what’s supposed to pass for a U.S. official these days. It’s worth repeating that seeking asylum is in fact legal immigration, and it’s worth repeating that Cuccinelli is a racist and absolute goofball of a human being who remains in an acting capacity because he’s too extreme to pass a confirmation vote.