Asylum ban challenged
TIJUANA, Mexico — Hundreds of immigrants showed up at border crossings Tuesday in hopes of getting into the U.S. but faced the likelihood of being turned away under a new Trump administration asylum rule that upends long-standing protections for people fleeing violence and oppression in their homelands.
The policy went into effect Tuesday but drew a swift lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups.
“This is the Trump administration’s most extreme run at an asylum ban yet,” ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said. “It clearly violates domestic and international law and cannot stand.”
Under the new rules, migrants who pass through at least one other country on their way to the U.S. must apply for asylum in one of those countries. Since most of the immigrants arriving at the border this year pass through Mexico — including Central Americans, Africans, Cubans and Haitians — that makes it all but impossible for them to get asylum in the U.S.
At the crossing in Tijuana, 12 people whose numbers were first on a waiting list to enter through a San Diego border crossing were escorted to a van that left minutes later to turn them over to U.S. authorities.
Ndifor Gedeon, 27, arrived in Tijuana nearly three months ago with the hope of seeking asylum in the U.S. after being jailed in Cameroon by a government that has been going after the African nation’s Englishspeaking minority.
He was rethinking those plans after hearing he may not have a chance at getting asylum. If his case is denied, he will be deported straight back to Cameroon.
“I feel sick,” he said of his anxiety. “If I am sent back to Cameroon, I’d lose my life.”
Many of Trump’s antiimmigration measures have been rejected by the courts, but one exception is a policy that requires certain asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their immigration court cases get resolved. About 20,000 have been sent back to Mexico, and thousands more are on wait lists just to get an asylum interview.
Asylum seekers must also pass an initial screening called a “credible fear” interview, a hurdle that a vast majority clear. Under the new policy, they would fail the test unless they sought asylum in at least one country they traveled through and were denied. They would be placed in fast-track deportation proceedings and flown to their home countries at U.S. expense.
At a crossing in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, 10 Cuban asylum seekers were called by Mexican officials Tuesday and led across the Paso Del Norte Bridge to El Paso, where they were handed over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. The immigrants will face a dramatically higher bar to be allowed in the country.
“I’d rather be in prison the rest of my life than go back to Cuba,” said Dileber Urrista Sanchez, 35, who has waited with his wife in Juarez for the past two months. Punished by Cuba for his family’s political views, he criticized the Trump administration’s new policy, pointing out that the first country he was able to reach after leaving Cuba was Nicaragua.
“How are we going to apply for asylum in Nicaragua when it’s just as communist?” he asked.