Many Central American migrants take free rides home
MOSCOW: Russia test-fired Sineva and Bulava ballistic missiles from two submarines from the polar region of the Arctic Ocean and from the Barents Sea on Saturday as part of combat training, the Defence Ministry said in a statement.
The Sineva, a liquid-fueled intercontinental missile, was fired from the Tula submarine, while a Bulava, Russian newest solid-fuelled missile, was launched from the
Yuri Dolgoruky submarine, the ministry said. They hit targets at training grounds in the northern Arkhangelsk region and on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia’s Far East, the ministry said.
“During the launches the specified technical characteristics of submarine ballistic missiles and the efficiency of all systems of ship missile systems were confirmed,” it said. More than 2,000 Central American migrants seeking to settle in the United States have given up and accepted free rides home under a 10-month-old program funded by the US government and run by a United Nations agency, according to a UN official.
The “Assisted Voluntary Return” program has paid for buses or flights for 2,170 migrants who either never reached the United States or were detained after crossing the border and then sent to Mexico to await US immigration hearings, according to Christopher Gascon, an official with the UN’S International Organization for Migration (IOM).
The $1.65 million program, funded by the US State Department, is raising concerns among immigration advocates who say it could violate a principle under international law against returning asylum seekers to countries where they could face persecution.
The returned migrants have not been interviewed by US asylum officers. But Gascon said his agency screens all participants to ensure they are not seeking US asylum and want to go back. Gascon, head of the IOM’S Mexico mission, said the program provides a safer and more humane means of return than the migrants could arrange on their own.
The effort here, whose scope and controversial aspects have not been previously reported, is the first by the State Department and UN to target Central American migrants in Mexico on such a large scale. The State Department would not comment on the record about its role.
Gascon said the State Department reached out to the IOM last year as caravans of thousands of Central American migrants traveled through Mexico toward the US border.
US President Donald Trump called the caravans an “invasion” and has made stemming immigration a centerpiece of his administration and 2020 re-election campaign. Migrant advocates are particularly concerned about 347 people returned by the IOM who had been stuck in Mexico under a controversial Trump administration policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
Under that policy, which began Jan. 29, some migrants who make it across the Usmexico border are given a notice to appear in US immigration court, then are then turned back to Mexico to wait the months it can take for their court cases to be resolved. In the past seven months, more than 30,000 migrants have been sent back under MPP, according to US Customs and Border Protection. Advocates say that the migrants often face danger and destitution in Mexican border towns, leaving them no good options.
“How can it be a voluntary decision (to return home) given the conditions they face in Mexico? It’s a choice between two hells,” said Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney with El Paso-based Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
Besides any danger they might face back home, there is another significant downside to leaving: If migrants do not show up for a US court hearing, they can be ordered deported “in absentia,” reducing their odds of ever being granted refuge in the United States.
Denia Carranza, a 24-yearold Honduran returned to Mexico to await a court hearing set for October, decided instead to board a bus back home last week.
She said she and her 7-year-old son had fled her hometown and a good job at a shrimp packing company after gang members threatened to kill her if she did not deal drugs to fellow employees. She had hoped to apply for US asylum.
But she said she was frightened in Ciudad Juarez - a battleground for drug cartels where the bulk of migrants await their hearings. Also, she had no job and no way to provide for her son.
“I am scared of going back to Honduras. But I am more afraid to stay,” she said.
The Us-based nonprofit Human Rights First said it had documented more than 100 violent incidents perpetrated against migrants waiting in Mexico for US court hearings this year, including rape, kidnapping, robbery, assault and police extortion.
The IOM documented 247 deaths of migrants near the Us-mexico border this year through 15 August.
In a 30 July letter to the IOM’S Director General, 30 US and international advocacy organizations said they feared the UN organization was returning migrants to countries they had fled “out of desperation, not choice, and where they may not fully understand the consequences of failing to appear whenever summoned by a US immigration court.”
There is no way of knowing how many of the migrants who opt to go home with IOM help might have been able to present a successful asylum claim. US courts ultimately deny most such claims brought by Central Americans and the Trump administration has said many are fraudulent.
Migrants who are sent to Mexico under MPP may or may not be seeking US asylum, but they generally have no opportunity to initiate such claims before being sent back across the border. The policy cuts out a traditional asylum screening step in which migrants are interviewed to establish whether they have a “credible fear” of returning home.