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Children in Central America are being sent across the border to Mexico, where they may have no family. An internal email said transfers violated the government’s own policies.
By Caitlin Dickerson
The U. S. border government has deported young migrants from other countries to Mexico, violating a diplomatic agreement with Mexico and the limits of immigration and child coverage laws.
The evictions, presented in a highly critical internal email from a senior border patrol official, positioned themselves as part of a competitive border-closing policy that the Trump administration deemed mandatory to prevent the coronavirus from spreading in the United States. The situations in which the Mexican government agreed to the assistance put the ordinance into force, i. e. that only young Mexicans and others under the supervision of an adult can return to Mexico after attempting to cross the border.
The expulsions endanger young people from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador by escorting them to a country where they do not have a circle of family ties, most appear to have been entrusted, at least initially, to the Mexican child coverage authorities, who oversee shelters through devout organizations and other personal groups.
Deportations reflect the randomness with which many of the administration’s highly competitive immigration policies were introduced; in many cases, they have led to the mix of young people between U. S. government agencies and now between governments in countries other than their own. The Trump administration’s handling of young migrants has left a circle of family members separated for months and without being able to unite.
A court report this month revealed that the parents of 545 of those young people in the United States lately, some of whom have been separated from their families since 2017, have not yet been found.
Under existing diplomatic agreements and U. S. policies, young people from countries other than Mexico are expected to be placed on flights operated through immigration and customs to their home countries, where they can meet with their families.
Rumors of expulsion of young people from other countries in Mexico have circulated among non-profit staff advocating for the welfare of children in Mexico and the United States, but locating these young people has been complicated due to abnormal reports from Mexican government authorities.
But an email from U. S. Border Patrol Deputy Chief Eduardo Sanchez, received through the New York Times, makes it clear that such transfers have only taken place, but that they constitute a flagrant violation of U. S. policy.
“Recently, we have known several suspected cases in which unmarried minors (MSs) from countries other than Mexico have been deported through ports of access that those referring to ICE Air Operations for deportation flights,” Sanchez wrote.
Referring to the federal public aptitude law on which the administration’s border-closing policy is based, he continued: “Please note that if they are not corrected, those movements will jeopardize Name 42 operations and must be stopped immediately. a DM from a country other than Mexico is knowingly deported to Mexico. »
Brian Hastings, head of the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol area, stated in an interview that non-Mexican youth had been sent back to Mexico.
Hastings said that without the immediate return of migrants under the pandemic, “we would have large amounts of infections, large amounts of mixing and again, we would fill a hospital. “He said border agents touch the Mexican consular workplace every time an un accompanied child is deported.
And Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner of the Customs and Border Protection agency, stated in a separate interview this week that such deportations would violate an agreement between Mexico and the United States. “It’s a component of his policy,” Morgan said of Mexico. .
Both officials said the deportation policy had helped them avoid the kind of overcrowding in border services that led to widespread complaints about the agency’s care of young people last year.
But border officials were now ordered to exempt up to 10-year-olds from deportation policy and transfer them to shelters in the United States who are supervised through the U. S. Health and Human Services Agency, Hastings said.
The coronavirus pandemic has created an opportunity for the Trump administration to enact its strictest border restrictions to date. Since then, thousands of young people have been temporarily deported to their home countries after crossing the border into the United States, a rupture with years of established practices that allowed young people traveling without adult guardians to be transferred to a US government shelter system. Where they were assigned to a social staff who worked to reunite them with U. S. sponsors while their asylum applications were reviewed in court.
Contrary to this policy, young people deported during the pandemic were only briefly detained in border patrol facilities or hotels before being sent back to their country of origin, without prior notification to their families, some had to borrow cell phones when they arrived at the airports to Find the circle of family members who are willing to take them.
The most recent evictions carry a potentially more devastating complication, creating even more confusion for families in Central America and who would possibly be looking to locate their children.
Some of the deported youth might have had a circle of relatives in Mexico who were waiting for access to the United States, but the Mexican government did not provide data on the youth transferred to their homes.
A Salvadoran father living in California who asked to be identified because he is undocumented said he first learned that his 15-year-old daughter had been deported to Mexico in August, when he won a phone call from the Salvadoran consulate in Ciudad Juarez.
“They said I had to stay calm because she was going to be fine, ” said the father. “I didn’t know what to ask, all confused. ” His daughter didn’t have a family circle in Mexico, she said.
She was waiting in El Salvador for the approval of a visa to enter the United States as a component of a special program for victims of sexual violence, based on what had happened to her in her home country, she said. had tried to cross the U. S. border before he was allowed to do so; assumed it was out of concern for his safety.
After the lawyers intervened on behalf of the girl, claiming that her rights had been violated during deportation, she was allowed to enter the United States and now lives in a shelter in Arizona. His father said he was waiting for permission from the U. S. government to meet. .
“I’ve lost my mind, ” he said. It’s a really stressful situation. It’s about your kids, you need the most productive thing for them, but at the same time, you know you can’t physically protect them or do anything right now, which is really frustrating. “
U. S. Civil Liberties lawyers are challenging the practice of deporting young migrants in federal court, arguing that it violates child coverage laws, such as the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, as well as national immigration laws, which require special coverage for young migrants traveling. . Only.
“Even outside the gates of the general illegality of Title 42, it is illegal under immigration law to deport a non-Mexican child to Mexico,” said Lee Gelernt, the case’s lead attorney.
The government has recently begun referring to young migrants crossing the border – as “single minors” rather than “unaccompanied foreign youth” – reinforcing the concept that if the pandemic-related border closure is in place, these young people are not eligible for legal protections that would otherwise have been granted to them.
According to public data, the US government has not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time It has deported more than 200,000 people since the re-closure of public aptitude boundaries came into effect, but the administration did not answer questions about how many of them were young or how many of them were sent to Mexico. In December, the border government admitted in federal court that at least 8,800 young people had been deported from the United States since March.
The Women’s Refugee Commission, in collaboration with several other rights organizations, filed an application for registration with the Mexican government and gained knowledge suggesting that at least 208 young Central Americans had been placed in the custody of the Mexican government between March 21 and June five, but the Mexican government did not specify how many young people were traveling and were not accompanied by adults.
“The Mexican government will monitor instances where minors of foreign nationality have entered Mexico irregularly from the United States,” said Arturo Rocha, spokesman for the Mexican chancellery.
Adults were also deported by the pandemic, in relatively giant numbers, allowing some of them to temporarily attempt to return to the country.
To combat repeated attempts, Hastings said, the Border Patrol initiated deportation flights to the interior of Mexico for Mexican adults who attempted to enter the United States four or more times.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed to McAllen’s reports in Texas.
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