U.S. — MEXICO BORDER REFUGEE CRISIS
By Vincent Lyn
Last month nearly 100,000 migrants/refugees were detained at the U.S - Mexico border by U.S. Border agents, the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019. About two-thirds of unaccompanied children caught at the border since Oct. 1, 2020, have been from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Mexican children make up most of the remainder. In February 9,297 unaccompanied children were in the custody of a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refugee office that manages a government shelter system for the kids — the highest number since 2019. In terms of apprehensions at the border, February was the fourth-largest month for unaccompanied kids in the last 114 months possibly ever. Arrivals of unaccompanied children continue to increase, averaging 400 per day so far in March. Most of the kids in custody are teenagers, but hundreds are under 12 years old.
President Joe Biden is now faced with an escalating and increasing humanitarian disaster. The increased numbers of people crossing the border right now is something that border experts have predicted for some time now. The roots of what is happening are in the Trump administration policies that caused massive numbers of people to be stuck on the Mexican side of the border — policies like “Remain in Mexico” (which forced over 70,000 asylum seekers to wait for their U.S. court dates in Mexico border cities) and “metering,” a practice under which U.S. border authorities place severe limits on who is allowed to approach ports of entry and ask for asylum, in violation of U.S. and international law. The increased border crossings was predictable, not because of Biden administration policies like winding down “Remain with Mexico,” but because of the dangers put in place by Trump’s cruel and illegal policies of deterrence.
Much has been written and the current language and miss-use of the term ‘migrant and ‘refugee’ has been flagrantly and incorrectly used. The main difference is choice. Simply speaking, a migrant is someone who chooses to move, and a refugee is someone who has been forced from their home. … Migrants, on the other hand, may move for any number of reasons. Some of them move to be with family or for economic reasons. But many of these are families escaping persecution and violence from gangs and the terrible squalid conditions that they have been forced to live in, from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico. It is because of this reason that a majority of these women and children should be termed refugee.
Unaccompanied children are the only migrant population that the Biden administration is refusing to expel. (The Trump administration was using Title 42 to expel them until a judge stopped the practice in November. While that judge got overruled on appeal in late January, the incoming Biden administration refused to expel vulnerable children alone back to their countries.) 42% of February’s unaccompanied child arrivals were from Guatemala, 28% from Honduras, 19% from Mexico, 8% from El Salvador, and 3% from other countries.
It is quite possible that 2021 will be record-breaking year for unaccompanied children crossing the border. The Biden administration had previously predicted that up to 117,000 unaccompanied refugee children could cross the border in the 2021 fiscal year (breaking the previous record of 76,020 children in 2019). This has challenged the capacities of U.S. agencies assigned to care for them, generating headlines about a “humanitarian crisis.”
Why are there so many unaccompanied children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border?
In February, most children apprehended originate from Guatemala and Honduras, two countries still reeling from the impact of two record-breaking hurricanes in the fall, the economic inequalities worsened by COVID-19, and persistent violence. What’s behind this increase? The backlog of asylum seekers — a humanitarian disaster created by the Trump administration — who have been waiting, in some cases for years, at the U.S.-Mexico border. At the moment, unaccompanied children (apart from unaccompanied Mexican children) are the only population that stand a 100% chance of being released into the United States to start an asylum process while living with relatives. (Families seem to have stood about a 40% chance in February.)
Right now, we have a militarized “border defense” system, hardly ideal even to interact with the typical border crosser of the 1990s and 2000s — a single adult male. But since the mid-2010s, at least a third of the population coming to the U.S.-Mexico border aren’t looking to cross undetected: they are children and families actively seeking out U.S. authorities to ask for protection, or unaccompanied children seeking to be reunited with family already in the United States. Notably, in 2019, well over half of the people apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border were children and families.
The Biden administration has taken several major steps to restore asylum access, missing from the policy rollout are timelines for ending several Trump-era practices that closed the U.S. asylum system. While asylum seekers themselves don’t have the luxury of choosing when to flee their countries, knowing when they can be admitted is essential for those waiting in Mexico so that they can plan their border arrival (to the extent possible) and know that they will in fact have the chance to pursue or renew asylum claims or that their slot on a waitlist will be respected.
In the absence of such clarity and amid an array of disinformation targeting this community, asylum seekers maybe deceived by smugglers who offer false versions of U.S. plans, or may attempt to enter without inspection between points of entry, increasing risks to their lives and well-being.
The Biden administration has taken the first steps in winding down this Trump-era policy — phase one applied to about 25,000 people — those with active cases in the program (perversely called the “Migration Protection Protocols,” or MPP, by the Trump administration). We still don’t know what those who weren’t admissible under this first phase should expect.
The U.S. government created this program to allow certain children in Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala to come directly to the United States to reunite with U.S.-based parents, thereby avoiding the dangerous journey through Mexico. The Trump administration terminated the program in 2017, but the Biden administration recently announced a two-phase plan to reopen it, starting with approximately 3,000 cases of eligible applications that were closed when the program was ended.
In a positive step, the announcement indicates that eligible parents will be contacted starting in mid-March; the timeline from there remains pending. Clear information in this regard will help to spare eligible Central American children from exposure to violence in Mexico and allow them to reunite safely with their family members. The administration also needs to develop its plans to expand the program to address its multiple shortcomings including broadening eligibility criteria, improved and quicker processing, and access to legal counsel.
While Costa Rica, Panama, and other countries have seen substantial arrivals of people in need of protection, given its location, size, and capacity, Mexico undeniably has a crucial role to play in responding to the regional refugee crisis. Asylum requests in Mexico increased by more than 700 percent between 2016 and 2019. More than 125,000 people have requested protection in Mexico since President López Obrador took office in December 2018, including over 13,500 in the first two months of 2021. While Mexico has improved its reception and processing capacity, further budget and staffing increases are needed to enable Mexico’s refugee agency, COMAR, to respond to current levels of demand.
Asylum seekers are frequently held in detention while their cases are processed, poor conditions in detention centers drive many of them to drop their claims in order to be released. A program to provide alternatives to detention, started in 2016, is not being fully implemented by Mexico’s national immigration agency, the INM. Another issue is that many migrants are not adequately informed of their right to seek protection in Mexico in the first place; others are denied entry upon arrival at Mexican airports. Addressing these problems is crucial if Mexico is to ensure access to asylum within its borders.
Certain basic administrative actions would greatly facilitate asylum seekers’ ability to make claims. One of these would be to allocate resources so that COMAR can establish a regular presence at Mexico’s southern border. Currently, asylum seekers presenting a claim at the border will generally be detained for at least a few days. To avoid detention, many asylum seekers try to travel undetected to towns close to the border to present themselves at a COMAR office or shelter. On this journey they are often victims of crimes including kidnapping, sexual assault, and robbery.
The U.N. Refugee Agency has dramatically expanded its presence in Mexico in recent years and provided important technical and infrastructure support to COMAR. Apart from appropriating additional financial support, the U.S. government should consider developing procedures with the Mexican government to provide access to protection in the United States for individuals who would face persecution in Mexico, as well as unaccompanied children when the best interest determination is that they should be united with their U.S.-based family members.
Vincent Lyn
CEO/Founder at We Can Save Children
Director of Creative Development at African Views Organization
Economic & Social Council at United Nations
Middle East Correspondent at Wall Street News Agency
Rescue & Recovery Specialist at International Confederation of Police & Security Experts