Border patrol officers have told migrants fleeing torture and persecution that they “don’t care” and that asylum doesn’t exist anymore in the United States as they enforce President Biden’s executive order limiting unauthorized crossings, according to a report from a group of advocacy organizations.
The group of pro-immigration nonprofits working along the U.S.-Mexico border said that many migrants who should have been allowed to cross and claim asylum were left “trapped” in Mexico, facing violence from cartels or needing urgent medical attention.
Their report, marking six weeks since the White House executive order, includes stories of migrants separated from family members, struggling to access legal counsel and having to rely on border patrol officers to decide whether they have a right to asylum.
“You’re not supposed to give basically a police officer discretion about whether or not they’re going to judge somebody [has] fear enough or, meets the standard,” Yael Schacher, the U.S. advocate at Refugees International told Newsweek.
“The asylum standard is really complicated and the way it’s being [applied to] who should merit an adjudication and consideration for asylum right now is just ridiculous. It has nothing to do with the law or the standard, really.”
Migrants walk on the US side of the border wall in Jacumba Hot Springs, California on June 5, 2024, after crossing from Mexico. Inset: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to attendees while commemorating the 60th…
Migrants walk on the US side of the border wall in Jacumba Hot Springs, California on June 5, 2024, after crossing from Mexico. Inset: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks to attendees while commemorating the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library on July 29, 2024 in Austin, Texas.
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FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Brandon Bell/Getty Images
Refugees International is one of several organizations arguing that Biden’s most recent rule, and another implemented in 2023, does not fix the issues at the border and just pushes migrants back into harm’s way.
“It could be just a matter of a single day before they get deported,” Keren Zwick, the director of litigation at the National Immigrant Justice Center told Newsweek, adding that asylum seekers are left with very little time to be heard or seek help.
“So that’s one really, really stark and devastating change, and applies to people with, really, very strong potential asylum claims, including LGBT people, indigenous people, people who are fleeing domestic violence.”
Biden’s executive order, capping asylum entries into the U.S. to 2,500 per day, effectively banned entries immediately as that threshold was already being passed.
Since early June, the number of encounters at the southwest border has dropped by around 50%, but organizations including the NIJC, Las Americas and Human Rights First, say that means those who should be allowed in are often not.
‘Credible fear’ screenings, used to determine eligibility for asylum, are down 90%.
Woman threatened with losing her children
Customs and Border Patrol agents load migrants into a vehicle after groups of migrants walked into the US from Mexico at Jacumba Hot Springs, California, on June 5, 2024. Migrants from countries such as Turkey,…
Customs and Border Patrol agents load migrants into a vehicle after groups of migrants walked into the US from Mexico at Jacumba Hot Springs, California, on June 5, 2024. Migrants from countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Guatemala, Nicaragua, China, India and Colombia made their way on foot into the United States today before being met with by Customs and Border Patrol agents for processing.
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One of the new rules requires migrants to “shout out” their needs to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, to make it clear that they have a genuine need for asylum.
“Many people are having their fears ignored and are getting removed,” Zwick said. “Either they themselves are uncomfortable because they’re not in private, or because they’re intimidated by the officers, or even when they do affirmatively try to speak up, the officers are saying things like: ‘There is no asylum, the border is closed. I don’t care or don’t want to hear what you have to say’.”
Schacher told Newsweek about a woman who fled her home in southern Mexico, after her neighbor’s children were kidnapped and she was threatened as unrest grew in the run-up to the election there.
“I think she had a well-founded fear and grounds to leave, before it was too late,” Schacher said, noting the woman was held in detention for four days by CBP.
After being moved to the main processing facility, she was held with others who wanted to raise their voices and ask for asylum, but officers said they would be placed in removal proceedings.
“She said her daughter was crying the entire time partly because of the fear and that one of her neighbors had just been killed, but officers said there was no asylum anymore,” Schacher added.
“They even suggested that she seek a statement in Mexico, which really makes no sense. Again, she’s Mexican, that’s just not how these things work.”
CBP officers then told the woman, who had also travelled with her sister, that she would be deported, along with her children.
“They said that if she tried to come again, she might have her children take children taken from her,” Schacher said. “The implication being that she was being removed and that she would be criminally prosecuted for reentry if she tried to come back because that’s the law.”
The woman was sent back to Mexico, barefoot, and found herself hundreds of miles from her sister, who had been sent elsewhere along the border near Texas.
Language and legal access barriers to asylum
Others have fled kidnapping and torture, bearing physical signs of abuse, but were still denied entry, the report said.
In another case, a woman and her daughter followed her husband and son, already in the U.S. and allowed to proceed with the immigration process, but the females were denied despite arriving having been through the same situation back home.
The report highlighted struggles around getting access to legal council within a short time frame, and said that CBP officers and facilities had little guidance in place on how to implement the new rules.
Yuneisy Mora, a migrant from Venezuela, walks out of her makeshift tent at a Migrant Camp in Matamoros near the Gateway International Bridge, between the cities of Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, on June 4,…
Yuneisy Mora, a migrant from Venezuela, walks out of her makeshift tent at a Migrant Camp in Matamoros near the Gateway International Bridge, between the cities of Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Mexico, on June 4, 2024. The following day, Biden’s executive order was implemented.
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CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images
For many, a language barrier also prevents them from getting their needs across. The CBP One app, which all newcomers are meant to use to secure an appointment also, is only available in three languages.
“Notably, if someone doesn’t speak one of these three languages, like indigenous asylum seekers or asylum seekers from outside of our hemisphere, they are no longer accepted under the rule,” Christina Asencio from Human Rights First told Newsweek.
“So essentially this rule is conditioning access to asylum squarely on use of an app that’s only available in three languages, patently denying equal access to asylum.”
Asencio pointed to those arriving from India, China, Afghanistan and Turkey as key examples of migrants who cannot properly access to the CBP One app and therefore cross between ports of entry.
Legal challenges to Biden’s executive order
All of the organizations behind the report argue that Biden’s policy is just pushing people back, including Mexicans, into harm, with no clear pathway forward.
The organizations have pursued legal action against the executive order, arguing that it places undue limitations on asylum, when statute declares all who are eligible should have access to ask for asylum regardless of their manner of entry into the country.
“We need to be adversarial because this is a fight,” Schacher said. “They’re not going to back down on this without being ordered to by a court.”
The groups are hoping to see an acknowledgement from those in Washington D.C. that current policies are not working and that a more substantial reform is urgently needed to fix the immigration system.
Newsweek reached out to the White House and CBP on Tuesday for comment, but is yet to receive a response.
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