Hundreds of doctors, nurses, health workers, and public health professionals have signed onto a public letter calling on the CDC to end the Stephen Miller-pushed order that has exploited the novel coronavirus public health crisis to deport large numbers of migrant children and other vulnerable people back to danger.
“The decision to halt asylum processes ‘to protect the public health’ is not based on evidence or science,” the over 770 signatories as of May 13 say in their letter to CDC director Robert R. Redfield. “In fact, this order directly endangers tens of thousands of lives and threatens to amplify dangerous anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia.”
The Trump administration has kicked out hundreds of migrant kids in recent weeks, who, “For the first time in decades … are being summarily expelled and denied access to protections that have been afforded to them under U.S. law,” CBS News reported. “The shift is being justified under a 17-page public health order the Trump administration believes allows border officials to bypass asylum, immigration and anti-trafficking laws.” An order that expert say has no basis in reality, will harm vulnerable people, and is blatantly unlawful.
“Legal guidance issued by the U.N. Refugee Agency (‘UNHCR’) on asylum protections in the COVID-19 pandemic makes clear that the U.S. may not put in place measures that categorically deny people seeking protection an effective opportunity to ask for asylum,” the letter continues. “Expelling refugees to countries where their lives or freedom are at risk, or transferring them to countries where they cannot find effective refugee protection, violates U.S. obligations under the Refugee Convention, its Protocol and the Convention Against Torture.”
CBS News reported that some of the children who have been deported include 10-year-old Jesús, who was deported by himself to Honduras. He’d been waiting with his mother María in Mexico under another unjust administration policy, but when they lost their asylum bid, she sent him alone across the border in hopes he could win protections on his own. “Instead, Jesús was placed on a deportation flight to Honduras within four days of encountering U.S. immigration officials,” the report continued.
Because the administration’s increased mass detention policies have in fact laid the groundwork for a COVID-19 crisis within facilities all across the U.S., the experts say that asylum-seeking families should be allowed to stay with relatives already here in the U.S. as their immigration cases play out, as has been done in the past. “Indeed, an October 2019 study of 607 asylum seekers subject to the Remain in Mexico program found that nearly 92 percent had family or close friends in the U.S.,” they said.
“An order that violates existing law, endangers the lives of migrants seeking refuge, and does not use epidemiological data to protect public health or human life, does not have a place in U.S. health policy, during a pandemic or otherwise,” the experts tell Redfield. “The U.S. can effectively and safely respond to the needs of immigrants during the novel coronavirus pandemic in ways that uphold our obligation to international refugee law. Public health decisions related to the pandemic should be designed to save lives and should be guided by scientific expertise, compassion, and respect for human rights.”