Trump border policy under scrutiny

SAN DIEGO — A Salvadoran woman seeking asylum in the United States spends her days sequestered in her cousin’s cramped house in Mexico, too scared to leave after being savagely beaten three weeks ago when strolling back from a convenience store. The attack came after she spent four months in captivity, kidnapped into prostitution on her journey through Mexico.

The woman is one of 55,000 migrants who have been returned to Mexico by the Trump administration to wait for their cases to wind through the backlogged immigration courts, and her situation offers a glimpse into some of the problems with the program.

Critics say it denies asylum seekers fair and humane treatment, largely by forcing them to wait in a country plagued by large pockets of drugfueled violence as demonstrated this week by the slaughter near the U.S. border of six children and three women, all U.S. citizens living in Mexico.

The Trump administration insists that the program is a safe alternative done in collaboration with the government of Mexico, even as the president is vowing to wage war on drug cartels that are a dominant presence in the border cities where migrants are being forced to wait. The Department of Homeland Security said in a report last week that it was “an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system.”

As he heard the case last week of the immigrant from El

Salvador, immigration Judge Lee O’Connor made no secret of his disdain for the program.

The judge said she was ineligible for the program because, in his view, the law only allows it for people who present themselves at official border crossings, not for immigrants like her who enter illegally.

But the U.S. still sent her back to Mexico with a notice that her next court date was Dec. 16, even though her case was terminated by the judge.

Customs and Border Protection declined to comment on the woman’s case.

Lexie Harrison-Cripps / AFP via Getty Images The International Bridge is seen with migrants waiting close to the border checkpoint with the United States, in Matamoros, Tamaulipas state, Mexico, on Tuesday. There are about 2000 asylum seekers living in tents next to the International Bridge that connects the Mexican city of Matamoros with Brownsville, Texas. The asylum seekers are being held in Mexico as a result of the Migration Protection Protocol.