US finds ally in Mexico as asylum policy marks 1st year
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. asylum 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 Donald 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 government last week after security forces repelled a caravan of Honduran migrants on Mexico’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.
This month, judges in El Paso began hearing cases of people who were returned to Mexico through Nogales, Arizona, the last major corridor for illegal crossings where the policy hadn’t been adopted. This has forced migrants to traverse dangerous sections of Mexico and travel hundreds of miles to make court appearances.