A new border crossing called PedWest opened last year between Tijuana, Mexico, and San Ysidro, in San Diego, California. To cross from Mexico to the United States by foot you walk through a gate, past a little gatehouse. Sometimes there are people just outside the barrier who have just been deported, carrying in hand a plastic bag of their belongings and some papers, looking disoriented. You walk up a long ramp, zigzagging a few times, and at the top pass Mexican federal police officers in camouflage and helmets, carrying machine guns. Then into a long glass passageway, decked with surveillance cameras and signs saying not to take pictures, skateboard, bike, or talk on your cellphone. To the left you can see the concrete trough of the Tijuana river, a mere dribble of water through piles of litter. In the distance a yellow line crosses it, demarcating the international boundary. It’s a long walk through the tunnel, descending in a spiral that’s been nicknamed el caracol, the snail. A façade imitating a rusted fence welcomes you to the entry to the U.S. inspection area, and security guards funnel you into line according to whether you have a commuter pass or other means of speeding through immigration. For thousands of people each day, this is a routine passage between two border cities linked by commercial and family relations.
But for someone fleeing violence, hoping to seek asylum in the United States, it is a gauntlet of possibility and fear. At the end of the line, they’ll approach a Customs and Border Protection officer in a booth and say that they are afraid to return to their home country.
Clara, a 28-year-old woman from Michoacán, a state in Central Mexico wracked by drug cartel violence, said she wasn’t nervous walking up the ramp and waiting in line with her three young children.
“I’m more afraid to go back to where I came from,” she said. In Michoacán, a man had followed her home and demanded money, saying he’d take her children if she didn’t pay up within eight days. The sum was about $150, but she knew he’d be back for more; cartel operatives had been going around the neighborhood. Clara lived alone with her 11-year-old son, 8-year-old daughter, and 6-month-old baby boy, and she called relatives in the United States for help. They wired her money for a plane ticket to Tijuana, and told her to try her luck asking for asylum; another relative in a similar situation had succeeded. (The Intercept is referring to Clara and other asylum seekers using pseudonyms to protect them from those they are fleeing and from possible retaliation by U.S. officials.)
By 8 a.m. the next morning, on June 13, she and her children were standing in front of a Customs and Border Protection officer at San Ysidro. When she said that she wanted to request asylum, she was taken into a separate room, asked some basic questions about who she was and why she was there, then made to wait nearly 24 hours, with a little food and no information. Near dawn the next morning, a U.S. official came in, repeated the same questions, and then told her that she did not qualify for asylum, because “the new government” had changed policy.
“It’s only for religious reasons, or if you’re gay, or if you’re fleeing the government. With the new government it’s changed,” Clara said the officer told her (she doesn’t know which agency the officer was from, but it was likely CBP.) She was given a document to sign indicating that she had agreed to go back to Mexico voluntarily. Two other Mexican women who were held with her that day were also denied entry, Clara told The Intercept in an interview at a women’s shelter in Tijuana, a few days after she tried to cross.
Even before “the new government,” Clara’s effort to obtain asylum may not have been successful. Mexicans historically have had a hard time showing that they fall into the right category of persecution, and aren’t just a victim of general violence. Clara might not have been able to convince a judge that she met the criteria or had proof that she and her children were in danger.
But the U.S. official was still not telling the truth: there’s been no official change of policy since Donald Trump took office, and her claim shouldn’t have been decided right then and there by CBP, whose officers do not have the authority to evaluate the validity of asylum claims.
A 20-year-old migrant from Usulután, El Salvador holds her eight month old baby at Casa Madre Assunta. The baby was born in Tapachula, Chiapas. The family has refugee status in Mexico, and have been speaking with lawyer Nicole Ramos about seeking asylum in the U.S.
Photo: Alice Proujansky for The Intercept
Clara’s story is not unique. Legal and immigration advocacy groups today filed a class action lawsuit against CPB and the Department of Homeland Security alleging a pattern of misinformation, verbal and physical abuse, intimidation, and outright illegal turn-backs of people requesting asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Lawyers involved with the suit said they’ve seen “a drastic increase in illegal turn-backs since Trump was elected.”
The suit, filed in federal court in the Central District of California on behalf of six anonymous plaintiffs and Al Otro Lado, a non-profit that works in Tijuana, alleges that CBP has “coerced asylum seekers into signing forms abandoning their asylum claims by threatening to take their children away, threatened to deport asylum seekers back to their home countries,” and forcibly removed people from ports of entry. The six plaintiffs, from Mexico and Honduras, had been threatened or had family members killed by cartels and gangs members, and had been forced “to return to Mexico and other countries where they remain susceptible to serious harm such as kidnapping, rape, trafficking, torture or even death.”
A CBP spokesperson, Jakie Wasiluk, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the class action suit, but said in a statement that “CBP has not changed any policies affecting asylum procedures,” adding that the agency “adheres to law and policy on processing asylum claims and does not tolerate abuse of these policies.”
CBP also stated that according to U.S. and international law, anyone can request asylum if they are afraid to return to their home country, and that “CBP officers are not authorized to determine or evaluate the validity of the fear expressed.” Rather, CBP is expected to process asylum-seekers for an interview with a trained asylum officer with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If that officer decides that the fear is credible, the petitioner can present their claim for asylum to an immigration judge.
Lawyers and charity groups working on the border documented an uptick in turn-backs and other irregularities with this process beginning in the summer of 2016, and it appeared to worsen after the election. A recent report by Human Rights First gathered over 125 cases of people being illegally turned back between November 2016 and April 2017. Over 32 Mexican nationals were refused by CBP at PedWest in November and December 2016 alone.
People have reported being told that the United States no longer has asylum, that Mexicans and mothers with children are ineligible, that they must go to the Mexican consulate, or already have a visa, among other false claims. In many instances, asylum-seekers were told that the refusal was the result of a change in policy because of Trump, as was the case with Clara and other individuals interviewed by The Intercept.
“There’s been no documentation of any centralized effort [by the U.S. government,] but the trickle-down effect of the rhetoric I think has opened up the floodgates of local officers who hold personal views that certain subgroups are taking advantage of the system,” said Shaw Drake, author of the Human Rights First report.
Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly promoted the idea that immigrants game the asylum process this spring, when he said that, “the vast majority of people who come up here…say the exact same words because they are schooled by traffickers to say certain words, to give certain scenarios.” Border patrol agents I met at a conference in April repeated the same charge, and previous investigations have found skepticism about asylum claims among U.S. border officials. Rights groups counter that there is no evidence of widespread fraud in asylum claims.
The class action suit asks that the six plaintiffs be granted emergency entry to the United States and immediate access to the asylum process, given the dangers they currently face. It also asks for court-ordered oversight and accountability measures to be put in place. Illegal turn-backs might be visible to outside observers, but once people pass into CBP custody, the process is behind closed doors.
“Ultimately our recommendation is that these proceedings be video-taped or recorded,” said Joanna Williams, of the Kino Border Initiative in Nogales, Arizona (which is not part of the suit.) “Because there usually isn’t any evidence. We need to be able to establish fact-patterns, to see if it’s always the same officers.”
Five of the six plaintiffs in the class action suit were turned away at a crossing with Tijuana. Local lawyers say the numbers of reported turn-backs have dipped in recent months, but they are still hearing of a few cases each week.
“They’re often told to go to a different port of entry,” said Elena Alderman, an attorney who has been working with the shelters in Tijuana. “The statement sounds like it’s official policy, to send them to some other port of entry that is accepting asylum-seekers. Reports are coming from both Otay Mesa and San Ysidro” (two entries for San Diego) that people are being told to go elsewhere.
Nicole Ramos, an attorney who works with Al Otro Lado, said “one woman tried three times here and eventually we just got her a bus ticket to Nogales, where she was able to enter.”
The impact of the rumor mill is hard to judge. After publicity and pressure from advocates this spring, local immigrants rights groups are reporting fewer reports of problems at some of the crossings, such as Nogales, Arizona. Other places, such as Reynosa, Mexico, across the border from McAllen, Texas, are so dangerous that it’s hard to reach would-be asylum-seekers there to evaluate the issue. (There have been reported cases of people being turned back at Reynosa only to be kidnapped. Cartel operatives have begun waiting near the international crossing and targeting people as they cross back.)
Advocates also say that a decrease in outright turn-backs could be due to fewer people trying to cross.
“When people hear the rumors that they can’t get in at one point of entry they shift to another or they try to cross the river,” said Melissa Crow, legal director for the American Immigration Council, and one of the attorneys on the suit. Advocates worry that people who decide not to try through official channels put themselves at risk of extortion and kidnapping by coyotes, and the physical perils of remote desert crossings.
If more people are making it past the gate in Tijuana, it’s certainly due to the response from Tijuana’s migrant shelters, activists, and lawyers. They’ve organized high-profile turn-in events accompanied by throngs of volunteers and news cameras.
Alex Mensing volunteered to accompany a caravan of more than 70 asylum-seekers who turned themselves in in Tijuana in May. “The goal was to have as many eyes and ears as possible, who understood what was happening, what was supposed to happen, preparing people before they get detained, and make it less likely that they get intimidated by an immigration officer to self-deport,” Mensing said.
“We thought this was a way to challenge what was happening in Tijuana specifically — it is a particularly important place for setting the tone and the standard for rejecting people at the border. The structure is new; the port of entry was just inaugurated last year. It’s got this long enclosed corridor that you have to go through, and there’s Mexican private security, Mexican authorities, U.S. private security, before you can even talk to U.S. authorities.”
Staff at several shelters told me that if someone plans to ask for asylum, they get in touch with a lawyer – and usually, that lawyer is Nicole Ramos. Originally from New Jersey, and a former federal defender in Alabama, Ramos moved to Tijuana and learned Spanish just three years ago. She recently gave up private practice to focus on assisting asylum-seekers.
In a tiny storefront office in a shopping center, she and her assistant were frantically handling phone calls from clients who had just launched a hunger strike to protest conditions at the Adelanto Detention Center outside Los Angeles, where they were being held before their asylum hearings. She had some 40 clients in detention in the United States, and was working with about eight who had yet to present at the border.
“We come in large groups and with the media,” Ramos said. “I always prepare [my clients] extensively, as though it’s going to be a hostile interrogation. Though sometimes CBP doesn’t like people to use the language of rights, like there’s something fake about it if they actually know their rights.”
Uriel González, director of a migrant youth shelter called Casa YMCA, said, “the presence of Nicole in the area has had a major impact. If people didn’t have her support and help they’d be returned immediately.”
Yet there is concern that the activist approach sets a bad precedent for CBP, and that CBP officers will now only accept people if they are in groups or accompanied by a lawyer and with documents in hand, stretching pro-bono attorneys thin and leaving refugees who don’t connect with shelters beforehand out in the cold.
“There’s that rumor mill especially in Tijuana that if you cross alone your chances are slim,” said Shaw Drake. “And so the shelters are helping people to put together documents and forms and packages – when they don’t have to do that at all, this level [of the process] doesn’t require evidence at all.”
Alderman, who also works with Ramos, said that, “Its been consistently reported that when people are presented by themselves without the support of a group turn-in, they are being told they cannot get asylum.”
Creating unrealistic expectations with CBP “is a huge concern,” Ramos admitted. “There’s such a tension with that and with wanting to help individuals.”
The situation for asylum-seekers in Tijuana was complicated by the arrival last summer of tens of thousands of Haitians seeking special status in the United States. Faced with long lines and overnight camps clogging up the entries to pedestrian crossings, Grupos Beta, the humanitarian wing of Mexico’s immigration authority, created a system of giving out numbers so that the Haitian asylum-seekers could hold their place in line and go to a shelter while they waited to be able to present themselves to the U.S. authorities, who claimed to be swamped by the surge in requests.
Rodulfo Figueroa Pacheco, the representative for Mexico’s National Institute of Migration (INM) in the state of Baja California, said that “we weren’t managing CBP’s appointments, we were simply getting people off the street” and that “we were never in coordination [with CBP] in the sense that either they were doing our bidding or we were doing their bidding.” He said that the system was intended as a response to an “extraordinary migration event” and that it had been phased out by last November as the number of Haitians in Tijuana diminished.
Still, according to Human Rights First, CBP has allegedly told asylum-seekers that they could not request asylum without making an appointment through Grupos Beta. (Figueroa said, “I don’t doubt that there may have been some agents at CBP who asked that, but I know for sure that there was no policy from CBP to do that.” CBP did not respond to questions about the ticket system.)
Refugees from Central America in particular often have no legal status in Mexico and risk deportation if they approach Mexican authorities. Grupos Beta is not an enforcement agency, but there are reports that they have turned people over to Mexican immigration. “Grupos Beta will give them humanitarian aid and orientation,” said Figueroa. “If it’s an enforcement position, which would be similar to ICE, we follow the law. If you qualify for refuge, you may apply for it and if you don’t, you are returned to your country of origin.”
Daniella Burgi-Palomino, a senior associate with the Latin America Working Group, said that she was “very concerned” with how Mexican immigration authorities handled Central American migrants in particular. “INM has been responsible for handing migrants off to cartels, for kidnappings themselves, and excessive use of force. By the time [refugees] reach the U.S.-Mexico border the likelihood that they’ve experienced some sort of abuse from Mexican authorities is very high, and so they also have fear when they are told to go to INM.”
Being turned away by the United States could have deadly consequences for refugees stranded in lawless Mexican border regions, Burgi-Palomino said. In March, she testified before the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, highlighting disappearances and kidnappings of migrants along Mexico’s northern border. The most dangerous border cities, she said, don’t have the network of shelters that exist in Tijuana, and “there’s no capacity for Mexican police to be defenders of migrants. People really have nowhere to go.”
Gathered around a picnic table and sagging couch beneath a fig tree in the courtyard of a woman’s shelter called Casa Madre Assunta, women from El Salvador and Honduras breastfed their babies and traded stories of how they fled and strategies for getting to the United States. Many didn’t want to apply for asylum in Mexico because they thought it would diminish their chances for the United States, or because they didn’t feel safe. But without status in Mexico, they could be to be deported to Central America — the worst possible outcome.
Elisa, a thin young woman from Honduras, 6 months pregnant and with two toddlers, said that her mother and three brothers had been killed by gangs. No matter what happened, she said, she wouldn’t let her children be sent back.
Clara was waiting in the shelter to talk to a lawyer, and didn’t know what she would do next. She wouldn’t go back to Michoacán, but said “I don’t know Tijuana, I’m afraid to go out with the kids to look for work.”
Erika Pinheiro, policy director for Al Otro Lado, said her organization has clients that “are being chased through Mexico, all the way to the border.” A family whose teenage son was murdered by gang members in El Salvador had been turned away by CBP and later “learned the man who had killed their child was looking for them in Tijuana.”
But for some, rebuffed by the United States, Tijuana offered relative safety.
Eduardo, a young El Salvadoran man who fled to Mexico after gang members tried to extort fees from him for his small clothing shop, was denied entry by U.S. border officials in early January. They told him that “it was Trump’s orders not to receive” asylum-seekers. He carried proof of the gang threats against him, and he tried twice, at different ports in Tijuana. Each time he was told “that they couldn’t accept us, on the order of the higher-ups. That they weren’t giving asylum to anyone.”
Eduardo decided to not to try again or to cross illegally; he was afraid of being deported to El Salvador. He obtained a humanitarian permit from Mexico and can work legally, and lives on the outskirts of Tijuana in an apartment with his pet chihuahua and a community of other El Salvadoran expats.
“A friend told me to try somewhere else on the border, to go maybe to Tamaulipas,” in the Northeast of Mexico, he said. “The cartels are there, and if they catch me they might kill me. So I said, ‘it’s OK, here I’m doing fine.’”
The International Women’s Media Foundation supported this project as part of the Adelante Latin America Reporting Initiative. Gabriela Martínez contributed reporting.
Top photo: A family walks through the San Ysidro Port of Entry.
This article is wrong. Turning back people whose own story reveals no claim to Refugee status is NOT “illegal”.
emboldened?? these people were hired from which country? Yes you may read between the lines AMERICAN VALUES – AMERICAN JUSTICE?? What justice that they deny others will they face??
IF we are a nation of law and order?? EQUAL PROTECTION UNDER THE LAW…- – how is it denied?
AND WHY – what rewards will these people be receiving for their dirty deal with the devil?
EQUAL PROTECTION denied to one is denied to all……
We hear of sanction cities -with an administration wanting to deport the less fortunate for parking tickets……
OUR government has gone a long way to destroy our values . . be careful hard workers may get ahead part of our core values – – work hard to advance…..report your neighbors to the KGB see something say something…..
Your headline makes the definitive statement that these ‘immigrants’ are being lied to by border officials, and yet in your article you state she doesn’t even know who told her this.
Of course, the open border lawyers and apologists are telling EVERY person who tries to come across to say they are under attack by the drug cartels or escaping violence..is that not a lie?
This country allows 800,000 to 1,000,000 to legally immigrate to America every year…far more than any other country in the world.
We cannot take people who just want to walk across the border as well, we do not have the room or money.
The country is 20 trillion dollars in debt! that is $65,000 dollars for every person in this country, we need to spend less in every aspect of our government…opening the borders to everyone who wants to come in is going in the wrong direction
I really care about the asylum seekers. What you do to the least of the children of God you do to him. They are children of God and people that don’t care have never suffered.
Real Americans with a well founded fear of persecution are shit-out-of luck.
Why does protonmail.ch report “[email protected]?theintercept.com” is an invalid address?
I think it is insane that people can get asylum like this. Why is it the responsibility of the American people or the taxpayers to take care of this problem? If they are afraid of what is going on in their “state” in Mexico, then march to Mexico City and tell the Mexican president.
What a hateful, selfish little mind. Ever read the plaque on the Statue of Liberty? “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Walt is right– whose bills are you paying, and then what? MS-13 at your doors?
NOTHING IS LIFE IS FREE . . . “Land of the FREE – – Home of the BRAVE” – there are dues to be paid….Humans help other humans – that is what made our country GREAT…….
if the only thing you can do is condemn others it takes away from your humanity….
EMPATHY is part of society….WE do not let children go hungry IF we can help
It make both us and them better citizens…..You can not take it with you – SO WHY IS GREED something good??
IF YOU THINK I’M STUPID – LET ME STAY STUPID…..BETTER THAN WHAT EVER YOU ARE I’M AT PEACE – MR. money grubber you aren’t
We don’t care, we don’t want them here. If you don’t like it, go to Mexico.
2nd.
This comment is typical BS and more fake news…do a little research on that statement, it is NOT on the Statue of Liberty…never was, it is from a poem that was was placed on the grounds years after the Statue was erected by some friends of the woman who wrote it…it had absolutely nothing to do with the statue, the statue was given as a gift because of the values of LIBERTY and freedom that the USA was promising to its people, the builder of the statue had no intention of sending the message of “give us your poor”
Tim – what are your values? UNITED WE STAND – – DIVIDED WE FAIL
do we work together for a better world or against one another to prevent others from getting one step in front of us…..dollars but no sense is not the way to live
that’s just a silly poem
In Walt, problem with your little mind is that you are imagining that the asylum seekers are the tired and poor. The reality shows that some of these (not a large group) are the ones that come to demand with lawyers the rights they don’t deserve. There millions of blacks and poor whites that need the help in this country, yet at their cost, you choose to disregard their rights for the benefits of many liers and cheaters and even worse murderers and drug movers. Asylum should not be an open door to every unfortunate. Why? Because the number of unfortunate and desperate is ridiculously overwhelming. Do you believe that Africans and Indians and Bangladeshies and every tribe on earth deserve the asylum any less? your logic fails you. You can’t see farther than social security office where they will apply for lifelong welfare. Just consider the poor that have nothing thanks to billions wasted on your charity without reason or without taking care of Americans first. If you are so eager to help them, why don’t you move over there and set up order. Don’t poop on someone else’s.
Dear taxpayer, your question is answered in the article, by the CPB: “CBP also stated that according to U.S. and international law, anyone can request asylum if they are afraid to return to their home country … “
Walt has a point about bills, the American taxpayer made a firm commitment to the military-industrial complex. Americans spend more on the military than the whole world combined. Under Trump, this expenditure will only grow as he remains steadfast to his commitment to weapons manufacturers. Those missile silos we are building and maintaining are not cheap. Neither are new military aircraft, drones, and other goodies. Are weapons and arms manufacturers are top priority, not some poor immigrant who is a victim of our failed economic policies wherein we outsource labor to slave wages, among other things.
Whenever conditions become unbearable for citizens in a Latin American country, the cause for such conditions can always be at least partially traced back to US actions. Our government cannot (or, should not) demand such inordinate influence over Latin American countries without being accountable for the failures of that influence.
It takes only a very casual student of Latin American history to know this.
Well Walt and your sycophants the people are out gunned by the government and the DTO’s (there is no difference) Of course the US has done nothing but arm & militarize the Mexican government to insure any uprisings will be dealt with swiftly. Then of course, forgotten with the help of a corrupt press.
Meanwhile, Dr. Mireles has encouraged the autodefensa groups to rise up…which probably won’t happen since during the last four years the government and the cartels (no difference) have been executing the major leaders and most radical autodefensa leaders while Mireles was in prison.
Mireles will be without a doubt berated as a crazy man by the government and minimized.
In fact, I will not be the least surprised if Mireles suspiciously falls over dead from a heart attack which the government will blame on his diabetic condition.
Zeta – 07/12/2017
With video
“Mireles convoca “urgente” a autodefensan armarse anta presunta invasion del ejercito en Tepalcafepec”
http://zetatijuana.com/2017/07/12/mireles-convoca-urgente-a-autodefensas-armarse-ante-presunta-invasion-del-ejercito-en-tepalcatepec-video/
Hmmm…and we haven’t even talked about Pegasus/NSO.
P.S. Let’s not forget the Hacking Team…..
http://www.maggiesmadnessdrugwarchroniclesbajacalifornia.com/2015/07/third-report-more-notes-on-hacking-team.html
This covered footbridge is the same as the one in Juarez. US phone service will end within a few meters or yards from the border line at the middle of the bridge. Yes, on all this. Why do not address the leaders, the church the parents of these countries– ALLSelling out to US corporations.
PresObama and SOSCrookedClinton had Honduras PresZelaya remov d from office to prevent 1, no cost tuition and a rise to the minimum wag a living wage. This is the problem.
Allowing entry just prolongs the correcting. That is why you do not go back either.
It’s not illegal to want to stay alive and have a better life.
They should fight and take over the govt. Like we did
Yep, who is preventing their own Bastille day or 4th July?
“we”? You were in the revolutionary war? Oh, oh wait, I see…you’ve…you’ve never actually faced an armed threat from a government or organized criminal organization in your life, but the highly fictionalized version of a 240 year old violent, widespread revolution floating around in your head is obviously (so obviously) preferable to the costs of the humanitarian system that we’ve attempted to institute as an alternative to that horror. Cool. Took me a second, but I get what you’re saying now.
I love how people like Brandon and Roch talk about Mexico as if the extent to which the CIA conducts political and economic warfare in that country hasn’t been revealed.
http://www.contralinea.com.mx/en/english/2015/03/15/the-cia-operations-against-the-mexican-guerrilla/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QjKZRpbj7w
Thanks Zara.
People seeking asylum as Convention Refugees must declare themselves to the authorities of the first safe country they reach.
In your mind, there can be no Americans capable of proving beyond a shadow of doubt they have a well founded fear of persecution, loss of privacy, threats of death and indefinite detention in the United States?
CBP above the law. US drifts toward anarchy with this POTUS.
Here is an interesting look at what lies ahead for immigration in the United States:
https://viableopposition.blogspot.ca/2017/07/immigration-religion-and-population.html
These changes will certainly have an impact on how Washington handles the immigration hot-button issue in the future.
Another sob story.
Only for those with empathy and compassion, I guess.
Great Article @Cora !!! Thank you!
ASYLUM SEEKERS?
you mean, seeking asylum from poverty, gang violence, bad government, drugs, media liars, lying politicians, a currency scheme that picks your pocket, and other stuff?
i’m sorry, were these people fleeing the US?
2nd?
absolutely.
border guards turning back US citizens fleeing to mexico.
why?
wallstreet needs slaves and victims and the IRS needs to collect!
might seem like a joke now, but not for long, mark my words.
My ? was miskeyed, 2nd! Which changes the meaning, yea, where do we go. This sweet good talk was a CrookdClinton ruse, to sound nice while you paid. No CrookdClintonFoundation border bureaus taking care of these people! Just sweet nice talk– I say nice things, therefore I am a nice person ruse!
Wow. Your footwork and impressive investigation really paid off, what an outstanding report. I’m pretty sure right off the bat the Haitians who made it across the border- although temporarily held in SD were flown back to Haiti on the QT. In addition, there were top level meetings between US & Mex on US compensation for housing when they were in TIJ, and I am sure the ultimate plan on 86 ing them back to Haiti.
Prior to them, there were groups of Mexican young people (sometimes the numbers swelled to the hundreds) demanding asylum @ San Ysidro POE. They were admitted via standard procedure (which is obviously non-existent now) and given court dates. This was pre-Trump, but it pissed off the US authorities. And prior to that group, there were the thousands of children where the rumors first circulated that it was the drug cartels sending them to overwhelm border law enforcement. Classic disinformation which circulated like wildfire.
I heard that KPBS of San Diego is asking for names of local Immigration advocates – Burgi-Palomino, Erika Pinheiro, Alex Mensing, Elena Alderman, Drake, Nicole Ramos and others you mentioned sound like prime candidates. But the reality is they might be a little too radical for KPBS. (;
You hit this one out of the ball park, excellent report thank you !
Basically, there is covert warfare being conducted and all the feel-gooders do is get thepeople to the border. They care less what happens to these children and abandoning them to life of nomads to life of abuse. All kind of abuse. This is also called trafficking. And these advocates care less to the results of their campaigns.
This article is not worth a comment !
Lying or telling the truth is part and parcel of one’s character. I think officials who are not above lying now were not above doing so long before our current administration was in place.
Seeking to leave Mexico because of violence doesn’t qualify as asylum. Mexico is violent because it doesn’t care about its citizens. The only way the U.S. could change that would be to affect regime change there and we know how that goes. Best to throw the deadbolt and let the Mexicans overthrow their own government. If the U.S. let everyone in that claimed they were escaping violence from drug cartels, there would be nobody left in Northern Mexico. The new administration is merely following the peoples wishes: We have had enough of this border crossing nonsense. We’re under no obligation to provide people shelter and food simply because their government is especially corrupt.
whether that is true or not, a lot of these asylum seekers are not from mexico.
No, Mexico is violent because their northern neighbor is the world’s largest market for the drug cartels. If government indifference produced widespread violence, we’d see more violence in the US.
As with most things, there are multiple causes of Mexico’s violence. But we can’t ignore the US drug market, in addition to the US government’s heavy-handed influence in the region.
I mean, we CAN ignore those things. But we’d have to do so willfully.