BROKEN SYSTEM NEEDS OVERHAUL
Antonio Alonso decided it was time to flee Honduras when his older brother told him he didn’t want to lose the only sibling he had left. Threats against Alonso had intensified in recent years as he insisted on investigating his other brother’s murder, forcing him to move from one city to another. A cycle of violence has been on the rise in Alonso’s home country since the U.S. supported the coup against then-President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. In March 2019, after five years of being on the run for his life in Honduras, Alonso packed up three pairs of pants, five shirts, underwear and hygiene supplies and started his journey to the United States.
Since he arrived in Tijuana, he’s had three encounters with organized crime, which has grown as a direct result of the failed U.S. “war on drugs” and efforts to militarize border communities. Alonso was denied entry to the United States and forced to remain in Mexico while waiting for his asylum case to be heard.
“Imagínese llegar a la frontera para buscar asilo y que le digan que regrese al lugar de donde está huyendo. Estamos sobreviviendo en el olvido,” he said. The English translation: “Imagine arriving at the border to seek asylum and being told to go back to the place from where you’re fleeing. We feel forgotten.”
Although the Biden administration canceled MPP and recently began admitting people with pending cases into the U.S., it will take months, even years, at the current rate to process the 24,540 people with active MPP cases. For the tens of thousands currently awaiting the opportunity to request asylum, there is still no solution. Antonio Alonso was one of the first individuals to be scheduled for an appointment to speak with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and start the process of being admitted into the United States. However, although his interview was scheduled for Feb. 24, he has still not been contacted by UNHCR.
The so-called surge of immigrants at the border has been a reality since the mid-2000s. Measures taken by the Trump administration restricted asylum processes for entering the country, manufacturing an even bigger humanitarian crisis. The recent news of thousands of unaccompanied minors seeking asylum at the border has garnered overwhelming and misleading coverage. The media, political pundits and elected officials have used words such as “influx,” “flood” and “surge” to describe the current situation at the border. However, language that suggests this is a new crisis that magically appeared yesterday must be categorically rejected. To understand the magnitude of the broken asylum and immigration process, we must come to the mutual understanding that this is the result of decades of cyclical reactionary policies, for which both political parties bear responsibility.
We must not give into the fear-mongering that is present in the political arena to deny health and safety to those who have reached the U.S. And we must rescind Title 42 — a Trump era policy that uses the pandemic as an excuse to expel migrants, including entire families, without recognizing their due process rights. That is urgent and necessary. The sensationalism that is penetrating mass audiences across the country disregards the lives that have been at risk for many years, fueling xenophobic rhetoric that does nothing but cause harm and separate families. A fabricated crisis cannot fuel more detention and deportation of migrants and refugees.
Organizers, advocates and interfaith groups have worked tirelessly throughout the entirety of the pandemic to call for mass releases of immigrants in detention while providing a safe alternative to incarceration that is rooted in community support. Post-release efforts have fortified the existing infrastructure in California that brings culturally focused solutions to a system built to dehumanize Black people and people of color.
Mass releases resulting from organizing and impact litigation during the pandemic have demonstrated that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention is not only cruel but unnecessary. Until we abolish immigration detention, though, California and local officials have an obligation to protect all community members, including those in immigration detention or stranded at the border. While California has finally recognized and included immigrants in detention in the state’s vaccination plan, we must also demand that ICE not use the vaccination of those detained as a pretext for more detention of community members and asylum seekers.
The so-called surge of immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border has been a reality since the mid-2000s. Some coverage has been misleading.
Jasso is the program coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee, and lives in San Diego. Duarte Bateman is the communications manager at California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice and lives in Azusa. Carmona-Cruz is the community engagement director at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, and lives in Oakland.