‘Remain in Mexico’ overlooks migrants’ health, lawyers say
MATAMOROS, Mexico — Maria Sam had lost count of her 9-yearold son’s seizures in the nearly three months since they applied for asylum in the United States but were told to wait on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.
But his most recent medical episode was enough to prompt Sam, who is from Guatemala, to pack up their few belongings and return to the border post to test the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy and its stated exemption for medical emergencies.
“Yesterday was the worst because he turned purple,” Sam said last Wednesday, as her son David clutched her jacket and they prepared to walk to the international bridge that connects this dangerous area of Mexico to Brownsville. “They had to call an ambulance and bring him to the hospital.”
Also at the port of entry on that cold, rainy afternoon was a Honduran mother with a child who has autism. Nearby, a 7-year-old whose rare brain disorder, lissencephaly, gave her a life expectancy of only three more years, danced to the holiday jingle “Mi Burrito Sabanero” playing on the cellphone of a volunteer doctor. That doctor had just asked U.S. immigration officials to allow the families in on a medical exemption after evaluating them.
A little more than a year ago, these families, fleeing violence and upheaval in Central America, probably would have requested asylum, been detained for a short period in the United States and released to await an adjudication of their cases — the “catch and release” process that infuriates President Donald Trump. While in custody, the migrants were entitled to treatment at public hospitals and clinics of the United States, or by the federal government at a detention center.
But in January 2019, the administration introduced the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, which empowered officers to return migrants south of the border to wait for the duration of their cases. Senior officials with the Department of Homeland Security were quick to note the exemptions for migrants who could establish a sufficient fear of torture or persecution or had known physical or mental health issues.
But as the policy returned around 60,000 migrants to Mexico, those exemptions were largely ignored, according to immigration lawyers, U.S. doctors in Matamoros and the migrants themselves.
At a makeshift camp in Matamoros, tents crowd a muddy levee, housing around 2,500 migrants. Families cook on homemade stoves built out of old washing machines. From a trailer, Dr. Maura Sammon, the medical director for Global Response Management, leads a team of doctors, some of whom are migrants themselves.
Sammon said the team treated at least 40 patients a day. She listed the more serious medical issues: sickle cell anemia, hypoxia, third-degree burns and sepsis. Other patients included a 70year-old with chest pains, children with epilepsy or development disorders, a migrant with HIV as well as one with ovarian cancer.
“This is 100 percent a creation of MPP,” Sammon said. “It is not a virtual wall — it is a wall. You see how close that river is. You see people looking at that river every day and saying, ‘The United States is right there.’ ”
Her team sends patients in need of emergency care to a nearby hospital, but the care can be inadequate. A boy who went to the hospital with appendicitis was discharged, then his appendix ruptured, Sammon said. Some migrants refuse to go to the hospital for fear of being kidnapped by cartel organizations, the same threat that prompted the State Department to advise Americans not to travel to Matamoros. On Thursday, a drive-by shooting near the camp forced the evacuation of Sammon’s medical team.
Homeland security officials say the new asylum policy, more commonly known as Remain in Mexico, quelled a surge of migration last year and eased overcrowded detention facilities in the United States. Forcing migrants to wait in Mexico has also discouraged those unlikely to qualify for asylum from participating in the process, officials say.
In raw numbers, the policy appears to be working. Trump has celebrated eight straight months of declining arrests at the border. In January, Customs and Border Protection recorded more than 36,600 arrests at the border, down about 75 percent from the more than 144,100 arrests in May.
“While I think it’s fair to say the administration is having an impact on reducing the number of people who enter, the human cost is appalling,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who was the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama. “The Trump administration is banking on the notion that if the problem is on the other side of the border, it’s not our problem, even though it is of our making.”