November 28, 2018

U.S. Gov’t denies legal entry to asylum seekers

located:	USA
editor:	Yair Oded

After spending weeks in makeshift shelters on the Mexican side of the border, members of the migrant caravan have marched to the U.S. San Ysidro border crossing last Sunday, demanding to be admitted into the country and lodge their asylum requests.

As they approached the border crossing, Mexican federal police attempted to prevent them from advancing, which threw the crowd into chaos. As hundreds of migrants attempted to pass through the blockade of Mexican policeman, some had managed to get closer to the American border, only to be fired at with tear gas by US Border Patrol agents. Many among the crowd were women and children.

Referring to Sunday’s events, the U.S. president, as well as others in his administration, played down the Border Patrol agent’s response, claiming that the tear gas hurled at the migrants was “very safe” and that doing so was in fact standard procedure. All the while, the president and numerous other Republican leaders and commentators have portrayed the migrants as lawless “tough” criminals, stating “we don’t want these people here,” and asserting that if they wish to apply for asylum they must enter the country legally. Entering legally, however, was precisely what these migrants attempted to do, when they were denied access to the border crossing.

But in order to understand why the migrants resorted to storming past the Mexican soldiers, one must first consider the conditions they (as well as thousands of other migrants) face while trying to cross legally into the country.

Several months ago, the U.S. government decided to limit the daily number of people allowed to enter the U.S. through the Mexican border and apply for asylum. According to this recent policy, referred to as “metering”, once the daily cap of asylum seekers is reached, all other migrants are to register in a handwritten, unofficial notebook and must wait on the Mexican side of the border until their name is eventually called, which in a growing number of cases takes up to several months.

Meanwhile, a humanitarian crisis has formed in Tijuana, Mexico, as migrants waiting to cross overcrowd the temporary shelters erected to house them and fail to gain proper access to food and potable water. The mounting desperation of migrants stuck in limbo, not knowing if and when they will be able to access the U.S. border and present their case to an immigration officer, has led many of them to march towards the border en masse.

It has also been reported that the U.S. government is currently in the process of reaching an agreement with the Mexican government titled “Remain in Mexico”- a policy according to which asylum seekers will be permanently forbidden from accessing the United States border through Mexico.

Both the ‘metering’ and emerging ‘Remain in Mexico’ policies indicate that what the current administration seeks is not to encourage people to cross the border legally but rather to stem the flow of asylum seekers into the country completely. It is important to mention that preventing individuals from lodging asylum claims at the border constitutes a blunt violation of the UN Refugee Convention, to which the United States has been a signatory for nearly seven decades.

Photo: themikebot/flickr/cc