Deported migrants heading to limbo?
Worst-case scenario is refugee camps for non-Mexican deportees
EL PASO — A year ago this week, top U.S. and Mexico immigration officials gathered at Border Patrol sector headquarters to sign a new repatriation agreement in front of dozens of dignitaries and media.
The repatriation agreements, also signed at eight other points along the southern border, were the product of work between advocates, two national governments and multiple law enforcement agencies and achieved new protections for deported migrants.
Now sweeping new immigration enforcement plans under the Trump administration could trample those accords with a provision that includes turning back to Mexico unauthorized immigrants who aren’t Mexican citizens, if they cross the U.S. southern border and want to claim asylum or other immigration relief — a plan Mexico has decried.
“If the United States government insists on deporting or wants to send to Mexico people who aren’t Mexican citizens, there is no reason why we should receive them,” Mexico Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray told Mexican media this week. “It would be, frankly, a unilateral action without precedent, unacceptable.”
Advocates fear that migrants from Central America, Cuba, Haiti and elsewhere could end up in a sort of limbo: refused by the U.S., unaccepted by Mexico.
“We are worried that people could end up between deportation and rejection,” said Blanca Navarrete, director of the
Ciudad Juárez-based nonprofit Binational Defense and Advocacy Program. “It would be a huge challenge for the Mexican government to handle that kind of flow.”
What would it look like to turn back to Mexico people who aren’t from Mexico?
Advocates say there is no infrastructure at the Mexican border for such returns.
The 2016 repatriation agreements were meant to keep deported Mexican migrants safe in violenceprone border towns. They are hyper-local and contain guidance about how Mexican citizens can be returned, down to the specific hours and ports of entry for handing over men, women and children, unaccompanied minors, and deportees with criminal records.
During the worst years of drug violence that surged in 2008, U.S. authorities would sometimes deport busloads of people in the middle of the night to an international bridge connecting downtown El Paso with downtown Ciudad Juárez.
On the other side awaiting them: a strip of bars and seedy hotels.
The agreements curbed deportations to hours in which Mexico’s National Migration Institute, or INM, could staff a small office on the international bridge to help process their citizens, many of whom arrive with nothing — no money, no ID, no phone — and provide them aid. The drop-off hours were set at 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. for “general repatriations;” from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. for unaccompanied minors and people with special needs.
Today, INM’s workers, clad in khakis and purple shirts, walk to the U.S. side of the bridge to pick up their deported paisanos on foot and accompany them to the office where they can get a provisional ID and a bus ticket home, partially subsidized by the government. Snack bags and used clothing are available at a municipal office nearby.
But the demographics of illegal immigration have shifted considerably, with far fewer Mexicans attempting to cross illegally and more migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and countries “other than Mexico” — OTMs, in Border Patrol shorthand.
Under the Obama administration, when those migrants were caught at the border, they were either detained, criminally charged for the illegal crossing and deported to their country of origin; or, if they made an asylum claim, released to family or friends in the U.S. to await a court hearing, in some cases wearing a GPS ankle bracelet.
So many Central Americans have claimed asylum or some form of immigration relief that the backlog of immigration cases has swelled to more than 534,000 and wait times for a hearing can stretch to years in some districts.
Recognizing that bottleneck, DHS Secretary John Kelly authorized delivering migrants back across the Mexican border to await the outcome of their cases, citing authority under the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965.
And although Mexico City has said “no” to that practice on the border, Mexican customs and immigration agents rarely check people crossing south.
In the early 2000s, Border Patrol agents throughout West Texas and New Mexico would transport undocumented migrants to the station at the downtown El Paso bridge, open a door to the northbound pedestrian lane, and let them walk back to Mexico against the current of Mexicans crossing north legally to shop, work or study, said Ramiro Cordero, Border Patrol spokesman.
That was before the U.S. government began prosecuting the majority of undocumented Mexican immigrants apprehended by Border Patrol.
“They would go from Border Patrol custody to release on the bridge,” he said.
But what about people from places other than Mexico?
“Literally, us returning OTMs to Mexico?” he said. “I don’t know how that would work.”
Vicki Gaubeca of the ACLU’s Regional Center for Border Rights in Las Cruces said sending back citizens of other countries seeking asylum in the U.S. could violate their constitutional rights as well as international human rights conventions.
“It is one of those things that we have to see what it looks like,” she said. “Will we see refugee camps popping up in northern Mexico? That would be a worst-case scenario.”