ReliefWeb

SUMMARY

The Trump administration is engaged in a sustained campaign against vulnerable women, men, and children seeking asylum in the United States. It is an effort waged through policies and actions designed to deter individuals from seeking protection, and to close off avenues for asylum that are well grounded in international and domestic law and established practice. Refugees International (RI) is deeply concerned that these policies have created needless suffering and that the administration’s demonization of asylum seekers has mischaracterized and disadvantaged the asylum-seeker population.

The recent separation of families of asylum seekers, described in the pages below, was perhaps the most publicly visible of these unfortunate policies. But other measures have also caused asylum seekers significant harm. These include the blocking of access at U.S. ports of entry, the criminal prosecution of asylum seekers for unauthorized entry without regard to the credibility of their requests for protection, an unreasonable narrowing of grounds for asylum, and pressure in detention facilities for asylum seekers to self-deport. Refugees International believes that all of these actions are in conflict with important U.S. legal and policy commitments to protection of vulnerable persons fleeing persecution and violence and must come to an end.

The report that follows is based on a recent RI mission to border communities in the United States and Mexico between July 24 and August 2, 2018. The RI team was in several locations, including:

• Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico

• San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico

• McAllen and Brownsville, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico

During our mission, RI met with asylum seekers who fled their homes after being shot or threatened by gangs in the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras). Many had been sheltering for weeks or months on the Mexican side of the border, confronting serious risks in Mexico and U.S. government restrictions on access to asylum in the United States. On both sides of the border, RI also met with attorneys, humanitarian aid providers, and others from civil society working to provide protection to these vulnerable populations.