Meet Mexico, immigration ally

Policy shift makes for better U.S. border relations

TIJUANA, Mexico — The Perla family of El Salvador has slipped into a daily rhythm in Mexico while they wait for the U.S. to decide whether to grant them asylum.

A modest home has replaced the tent they lived in at a migrant shelter. Their 7- and 5-year-old boys are in their second year of public school, and their third son is about to celebrate his second birthday in Tijuana.

They were among the first migrants sent back to Mexico under a Trump administration policy that dramatically reshaped the scene at the U.S.-Mexico border by returning migrants to Mexico to wait out their U.S. asy- lum process. The practice initially targeted Central Americans but has expanded to other nationalities, excluding Mexicans, who are exempt. The Homeland Security Department said Wednesday that it started making Brazilians wait in Mexico.

Today, a year after the policy began, many other migrants have given up and gone back to the home countries they fled. Others, like the Perlas, became entrenched in Mexican life. The system known as the Migrant Protection Protocols helped change Washington’s relationship with Mexico and made the neighbor a key ally in President Trump’s efforts to turn away a surge of asylum seekers.

The Perlas are faring better than most of the roughly 60,000 asylum-seekers, many of whom live in fear of being robbed, assaulted, raped or killed. Human Rights First, a group critical of the policy, has documented 816 public reports of violent crimes against those who were returned to Mexico. Late last year, the body of a Salvadoran father of two was found dismembered in Tijuana. A Salvadoran woman was kidnapped into prostitution in Ciudad Juarez.

Rapid expansion of the policy was key to a June agreement between the U.S. and Mexico that led Trump to suspend his threat of tariff increases. The Republican president said at the time that Mexico was doing more than Democrats to address illegal immigration. American officials praised President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s govern- ment last week after security forces repelled a caravan of Honduran migrants on Mex- ico’s southern border with Guatemala. “Mexico continues to be a true partner in addressing this regional crisis,” Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said on Twitter. U.S. border authorities say the policy has contributed to a sharp drop in illegal crossings, though legal challenges could modify or even block it. Immigration judges hear cases in San Diego and El Paso, Texas, while other asylum-seekers report to tent courts in the Texas cities of Laredo and Brownsville, where they are connected to judges by video.

APFILEPHOTOS WAITING IT OUT: Juan Carlos Perla carries his youngest son, Joshua Mateo, while leaving home in Tijuana, Mexico, for an asylum hearing in July 2019 in San Diego. The Perlas were among the first families sent back to Mexico to await a ruling on their asylumn claim.

SETTLING IN: Ruth Aracely Monroy rushes her son Nahum Perla to school from their home outside Tijuana on Tuesday. In March 2019, right, she and son Carlos were living among tents set up in a shelter in Tijuana, but have since moved to a modest home.