From the May-June 2022 issue of News & Letters
President Biden announced that a surge of asylum specialists will be sent to the border by May 23, and federal agencies like Border Patrol and U.S. Customs and Border Protection should prepare a return to compliance with the laws that regulate immigration. A national health emergency declared by Donald Trump and continued by Biden had temporarily superseded certain statutes so that people seeking asylum in the U.S. have had to wait in Mexico for an appointment. Even while other pandemic emergency measures have begun to lift, virtually all Republican members of Congress and a growing number of Democrats are urging the Biden Administration to keep breaking the law past May 23.
WAITING IN MEXICO IS A CATASTROPHE
Mexicali, B.C., Mexico: “Día de los Muertos” protest art in solidarity with migrant workers at the border with Calexico, California. By Hector Silva.
There is artificial media hysteria that something catastrophic will happen at the border if the government follows U.S. law, yet people seeking asylum from murder and persecution in their home country are not safe waiting in Mexico. They experience catastrophe on a daily basis. This is happening because of an arbitrary executive order in the U.S. whose public health implications are flimsy at best (Title 42).
Four-year-old Louvenjuna Elien, from Haiti, who has been waiting nine months in the border city of Reynosa with her family, developed a stomach hernia there. Nearby, 61-year-old Juan Mejia has had enough of being harassed by gangs in his native Honduras (gangs which were propelled to power under a 12-year misadventure by U.S.-supported regimes to forestall a land reform and an increase in wages). Speaking to the Dallas Morning News, he verbalizes the hope against hope of so many that Title 42 will fall: “We are waiting for God to tell us they will let us pass.”
Nonprofit organizations which run mobile health clinics for people like Louvenjuna and Juan testify to the violence suffered by the people. “We don’t go a day without dealing with patients who have been kidnapped… women raped in front of children, fathers taken by gangs for extortion attempts,” said nonprofit worker Brendan Tucker.
Every passing day, the situation in Mexico grows worse with an added growth of gangs, which prey on the hostages provided them by the U.S. government.
Many asylum seekers have family members already living in the U.S. and could simply stay at their homes in safety while waiting for their court dates. The real human error of the Biden administration is in not revoking the Title 42 executive order sooner than a full 16 months into his term.
–Buddy Bell