It was a warm evening in August when Keren, a 34-year-old migrant woman from Honduras, noticed a seriously injured man running down the street in Nogales, Sonora, a city just across the U.S.-Mexico border from Arizona. He had been stabbed; the knife was still buried in the side of his abdomen, Keren remembers. He refused her help and told her to run away. She was in danger, he said.
The moment stuck with terrified Keren. She and her children had fled their hometown in Honduras and arrived in Nogales in June, hoping to seek asylum in the United States. Now, thanks to two Trump-era immigration policies, they—and thousands of others like them—are stranded in Mexico, where they face similar threats to their safety.
The first policy, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP)—sometimes known as the “remain in Mexico” policy—was enacted by former President Donald Trump in 2019 and requires all asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while a U.S. judge evaluates their asylum claim, a process that can take years. In 2020, Trump invoked the second policy: the health measure Title 42, which said that in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government can immediately expel anyone who attempts to make an unauthorized crossing into the U.S., including people seeking asylum. And while MPP allows people to file an asylum claim and wait for the answer in Mexico, Title 42 doesn’t allow people to file any sort of claim at all.
On the ground, both policies have similar effects on people like Keren, who was expelled under Title 42. Both policies have sent thousands of people who had hoped to seek refuge in the U.S. instead to notoriously dangerous cities across the border in Mexico. Yet in recent litigation, the Biden Administration has chosen to fight to end one policy and uphold the other—a position critics say is hypocritical and…
Source : time
