Imagine, if You Can, the Desperate Plight of Refugees at our Southern Border, Part 3
The Biden Administration’s Attempts to Right Injustices Against Asylum Seekers
Crowd welcoming asylum seekers. Photo: John Englart via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0
Roughly 60,000 asylum seekers, some waiting for as long as a year and a half, were sent back to Mexico to await a hearing date held at four different designated United States locations in Mexican tents under the former administration’s so-called MPP or Remain in Mexico policy, implemented in January 2019.
Some have to travel by bus to hearing centers in those distant Mexican cities; sometimes they take their families because they fear being separated. MPP required that asylum seekers be physically present in the United States for an immigration court hearing, but under MPP, with pandemic protocols, asylum seekers were also prevented from entry into the United States and those Mexican tent courts are presently closed due to covid-19.
Some 25,000 individuals with active cases in the asylum seekers program were deported or chose to return to their home country. Lawyers have crushing caseloads. Despite a dozen new immigration judges hired since President Biden took office, data from the nonprofit research organization, Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), reports that 126,911 new immigration court cases were added so far in fiscal year 2021; only 68,260 cases, however, have been completed.
The total number of backlogged cases is now 1,337,372. “In general, the number of cases from the Department of Homeland Security into the court system just continues to dramatically outpace what immigration judges are able to complete,” TRAC lead researcher Austin Kocher stated.
On Inauguration Day and in the first days of the administration, President Biden and Vice President Harris were ready to dismantle some of the prior administration’s immigration policies. After the inauguration, the president returned to the Oval Office and signed two executive orders, out of 17, taking major steps to dismantle the past administration’s immigration policies.
Deportations were paused for 100 days and new enrollments in the MPP policy were stopped. Karen Tumlin, founder of the Justice Action Center, an organization providing legal aid to immigrants, called the step to end MPP, “Huge. It confirms the Biden-Harris commitment to restoring dignity to our asylum system. Here’s to the next, critical steps to remedy the inhumane impacts of this shameful program!” In February, some asylum seekers were allowed into the United States.
Biden is moving cautiously to confront the most intractable immigration issues by creating a task force reuniting migrant children separated from their families, rebuilding a working asylum system, and restoring opportunities for foreign workers and students to enter the country.
The effort to locate parents and children separated in the summer of 2018 will take months, if not years, The New York Times reported in February 2021. In about 300 cases, officials are still searching for deported parents — in some instances, combing through remote areas of Central America.
Also in February, Alejandro Mayorkas, Department of Homeland Security secretary overseeing Customs and Border Protection, Immigration, and Customs Enforcement, and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, stated to National Public Radio host, Rachel Martin, “…we are building a program to prioritize individuals who entered the Remain in Mexico program … according to the date on which they first entered the program.” He proposed $4 billion to address the problems causing people to flee their home countries in the first place, to invest in their countries of origin, and to equip them with the infrastructure and capabilities to address the violence, the economic desperation, and the corruption that causes so many people to flee.
The president of the United States, in consultation with Congress, determines the number of refugee admissions each year. In fiscal 2016, the U.S. admitted nearly 85,000 refugees. Fewer than 54,000 refugees were admitted in fiscal 2017, after President Trump reduced the cap via executive order. And then covid-19 appeared and the southern border was closed. For fiscal 2020, which ended in September, the limit was 18,000, the lowest it has been since the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980.
Thousands more asylum seekers from Latin America continue pushing their way toward Mexico because they hope it will be easier to enter the United States under the Biden administration. There is progress and hope.
Sources:
“Backlog at U.S. immigration courts getting worse, new research finds,” Border Report, Sandra Sanchez, June 15, 2021.
“Migrant encounters at U.S.-Mexico border are at a 21-year high,” Pew Research Center, John Gramlich, Aug. 13, 2021.
“Detentions of Child Migrants at the U.S. Border Surges to Record Levels,” The New York Times, Pauline Villegas, Nov. 5, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/29/world/americas/unaccompanied-minors-border-crossing.html
“Disabled migrant girl whose father carried her most of the journey from Honduras allowed to seek care in U.S.,” Border Report, Sandra Sanchez, May 10, 2021.
“Photo of Drowned Migrants Captures Pathos of Those Who Risk It All,” The New York Times, Azam Ahmed and Kirk Semple, June 25, 2019.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/us/father-daughter-border-drowning-picture-mexico.html
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
Jessica Clark is a graduate of the University of Maryland School of Journalism. After a 30-year career as a Public Information Specialist and photojournalist for several federal government agencies in Washington, D.C., she retired to Georgetown, Delaware. She restored former Governor John Collins’ 1790s home on Collins Pond, volunteers for and promotes several nonprofits in local newspapers, teaches English as a Second Language in James H. Groves Adult High School, and is a Sussex County Master Gardener.
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