Even with the threat of torture in a Salvadoran prison hanging over their heads, migrants are more likely to be told “no” when seeking refuge in the U.S.
Casa del Migrante has hosted migrants since 1987, but with the Trump administration slashing foreign aid, the shelter is navigating a new way forward.
For those moved to detention facilities elsewhere in the country the odds of winning asylum decrease greatly.
Facing torture if returned to their homelands, immigrants are detained for years as appeals drag on.
From food to finding flights, volunteer groups send support to the airport nightly to help asylum seekers.
Migrants released by ICE after dark often must rely on the kindness of strangers and sheer luck or risk spending long nights on the street.
William Barr has ruled that immigrants who fear persecution because of threats to family members no longer qualify for asylum.
Immigration advocates say a recent announcement of ICE raids was intended by the Trump administration to create fear in immigrant communities.
In September 2017, Capital & Main requested reviews of 18 immigrant detainee deaths that had occurred in 2016 and early 2017. ICE has still not released four of the reports.
This month U.S. Border Patrol agents met 200 peaceful, interfaith demonstrators with military-style M4 rifles and tear gas launchers.
In Tijuana, wait times for the asylum process are increasingly drawn out, exasperating migrants. Border patrol agents have turned away people who had hoped to present themselves for asylum.
In a three-part series this week, Capital & Main speaks to hopeful asylum seekers who were part of the Central American migrant caravan.
Co-published by the American Prospect
The U.S./Mexico border has become the focal point for an international human rights crisis that only seems to be getting worse. Veteran photographer Arturo Talavera captures images from refugee camps in Mexico City and Tijuana, and the desperate lines of asylum seekers arrayed along the U.S./Mexico border.
“What the government really seems to be saying,” a plaintiffs’ attorney said, “is ‘we don’t like asylum.’”
Conditions at Adelanto Detention Center, a privately operated prison currently used to detain undocumented immigrants, are said to be grim. Nine detainees, all of whom came to the U.S. seeking asylum, were so fed up that they staged a hunger strike. Guards responded with violence and pepper spray.