The Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review has announced that it is rescheduling all U.S. immigration courts through April 22 for asylum-seekers who have been forced to wait out their cases in Mexico under Trump administration policy, following weeks of pressure from advocates, immigration judges, and attorneys who have been urging a complete shutdown of the nation’s 68 immigration courts over coronavirus concerns.
The right thing would have been to allow these families into the U.S. to stay with relatives or other sponsors as they pursue their cases, as has happened in the past. But this administration has instead forced these families into a no-win situation, meaning that they won’t wait for their rescheduled dates in the U.S., but instead back in Mexican shelters, the streets, or an overcrowded border encampment where as many as 2,500 asylum-seekers currently live.
“Richard Newman, an immigration attorney with the non-profit San Antonio Region Justice For Our Neighbors, said Monday's announcement was a good move from a public health perspective,” CBS News reported, with the attorney saying "If one of us lawyers has COVID-19 and we walk over and talk to our clients, the entire refugee camp will get it. It had put us in this impossible position of trying to protect ourselves, protect our communities and protect the refugee community."
But it’s the conditions at this border camp that are also a major worry. While some hand-washing stations have been installed and asylum-seekers have been encouraged to avoid physical contract when greeting others, Texas Public Radio reported, fewer volunteers are able to bring food over coronavirus concerns, Border Report said, and social distancing is hard to practice when families are living in tents close to each other.
“Things like social distancing is very difficult here because the living conditions, some people are in 10 foot by 10 foot tents and there are maybe four or five people in that, so that’s a little impossible,” Daniel Taylor, a paramedic with non-profit Global Response Management told Texas Public Radio. This could all turn into something dangerous for already-vulnerable people, with Global Response Management’s Helen Perry telling USA Today the clinic was already seeing respiratory-related illnesses even before the coronavirus crisis.
There was no reason for families, many of whom have already fled traumatic experiences, to have been forced into this situation other than the Trump administration’s radicalism, much like why immigration courts continue to remain open. “People have been waiting in Mexico for months, in crowded shelters or in squalid refugee camps,” tweeted Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. “Some have been waiting longer—through the end of January, more than 150 people had been waiting over 10 months in Mexico. We should be letting them in, not keeping them in limbo.”