Human Rights First Issues White Paper Entitled 'Failure to Protect – Biden Administration Continues Illegal Trump Policy to Block and Expel Asylum Seekers to Danger'

WASHINGTON, May 25 -- Human Rights First has issued a 34-page white paper dated April 2021 entitled: "Failure to Protect - Biden Administration Continues Illegal Trump Policy to Block and Expel Asylum Seekers to Danger".

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Key Findings

* The Biden administration is blocking asylum-seeking families and individuals at ports of entry and expelling those who cross the border seeking protection to danger in Mexico. They include refugees from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cuba, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Russia, Somalia, Venezuela, and Yemen. Restarting its tracking of reports of attacks on asylum seekers in Mexico, Human Rights First has identified at least 492 public and media reports of violent attacks since January 21, 2021 - including rape, kidnapping, and assault - against people stranded at the U.S.-Mexico border and/or expelled to Mexico. In a survey conducted by Al Otro Lado from mid-February through early April 2021 in Baja California, 81 percent of LGBTQ asylum seekers reported that they were subjected to attack or an attempted attack in Mexico in the past month, including sexual assault by Mexican law enforcement and human trafficking. Those delivered to severe violence in Mexico after requesting protection in the United States include: a woman reportedly kidnapped and raped in Reynosa after being expelled in February 2021; a 10-year-old Nicaraguan boy and his mother kidnapped immediately after U.S. border officers expelled them in March 2021; and a Cuban asylum seeker expelled to Tijuana where she fears the smugglers who previously kidnapped her and killed her friend.

* Many Black asylum seekers and migrants are being harmed by the expulsion policy. The administration's failure to restart asylum processing at ports of entry in accordance with U.S. law has disproportionately affected refugees from Africa, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, who were not placed in MPP and therefore are not included in its wind down. They remain stranded in Mexico, and along with Black asylum seekers expelled under Title 42, face severe dangers, including targeted anti-Black violence and discrimination in Mexico. A survey by Al Otro Lado in Baja California reveals that 61 percent of Haitian asylum seekers blocked from U.S. asylum protections were victims of crime while stranded in Mexico. The Biden administration has also flown over a thousand Haitians back to their country, which is beset by political turmoil. These policies amount to another inexcusable episode in the U.S. history of discrimination against Haitian asylum seekers and migrants.

* Asylum seekers expelled to their countries of feared persecution remain in danger and unable to seek U.S. asylum protection, as the Biden administration continues to use Title 42 to block asylum requests, including at ports of entry. They include an asylum seeker hiding in Haiti after being expelled in February 2021 even though she had fled Haiti after being kidnapped and raped; a young Mexican asylum seeker who sought protection in the United States after being abducted by cartels; a Nicaraguan political dissident and her family stranded in Tijuana where they fled after a Trump-administration expulsion to Nicaragua had led to detention, beatings, and death threats in Nicaragua; and an asylum-seeking Haitian family trapped in Tijuana after being expelled and forced to flee Haiti a second time.

* The Biden administration continues to use a widely discredited Trump-administration policy to block and expel asylum seekers, illegally denying them refugee protections. None of the more than 150 asylum seekers whom Human Rights First interviewed in March and April 2021 was referred to apply for asylum or given a protection screening by U.S. immigration officers before being expelled under this policy. Since March 2020, CBP has permitted only 0.3 percent of individuals subjected to the expulsion policy to request these highly limited fear screenings. According to government data obtained by CBS News, a mere 143 asylum seekers - just seven percent of the miniscule number given interviews - were found by DHS to have established a fear of torture and allowed to seek asylum in the United States. The U.N. Refugee Agency has repeatedly warned that countries cannot use the pandemic as an excuse to avoid obligations to refugees and that turning people away at the border without individualized protection screenings violates international law.

* The expulsion policy is separating families and continues to endanger unaccompanied children. These children include a 17-year-old Guatemalan girl expelled at night to Nogales where she was forced to sleep outside. Families blocked from seeking asylum and facing danger in Mexico are forced to send their children alone to the United States for safety, including a 15-year-old Guatemalan child fleeing domestic violence with her mother, a 12-year-old Honduran boy who entered the United States alone after being kidnapped, and a 17-year-old Mexican asylum seeker who entered alone to escape his persecutors. For example, 16 percent of unaccompanied children screened by Immigrant Defenders Law Center between December 2020 and March 24, 2021 had previously traveled to the border with a parent or other family member. CBP also continues to separate children from their adult relatives who are expelled to Mexico - increasing the number of children held alone in influx facilities and shelters.

* Blocking access to asylum protections at U.S. ports of entry and expelling asylum seekers to Mexico creates confusion and exposes them to further danger. The expulsion policy pushes asylum seekers, including those facing imminent danger, to attempt risky border crossings, resulting in deaths and serious injuries, and makes expelled people more vulnerable to attack. Border Patrol agents and CBP officers continue to mistreat asylum seekers who are injured while trying to seek safety in the United States. Expulsions are also encouraging repeated border crossings. For instance, a shelter director in Mexico reported one migrant had been expelled 17 times. Such so-called "recidivism" means the reported number of expulsions significantly overcounts the number of people being expelled.

* Border Patrol agents and CBP officers continue to abuse migrants in their custody, deny them emergency medical care, confiscate their belongings, and carry out expulsions at night and to dangerous border towns. For instance, Human Rights First received reports that in February and March 2021, Border Patrol agents had threatened to unleash an attack dog against a group of migrants, left a three-year-old Guatemalan girl and her asylum-seeking mother freezing and hungry after taking their coats and refused to provide the girl a clean diaper, and deprived a Salvadoran family with a six-year-old child of food, told them that there was "no food for animals," called them dogs, and referred to them as imbeciles while expelling them. CBP has also denied medical care to pregnant people in custody and expelled them to Mexico while they were in labor or immediately after giving birth.

* There is no public health justification for expelling asylum seekers and migrants, as repeatedly confirmed by leading public health experts. Despite widespread condemnation from public health experts and revelations that objections of senior CDC medical experts were overruled by the Trump White House, the Biden administration continues to rely on specious public health arguments to defend the expulsion policy. But the administration's own actions - detaining asylum seekers, sometimes for weeks or months, before expelling them and transporting families thousands of miles to expel them through other southern border ports of entry - contradict the purported rationale for the CDC order: limiting congregate detention and transmission of COVID-19. In fact, the expulsion policy is actually endangering health and safety. The White House press secretary has effectively acknowledged that the Biden administration is keeping the CDC order in place because it "need[s] some time" to enact legislative reforms to the immigration system.

* Many asylum seekers expelled to Mexico are stranded indefinitely in desperate circumstances and are at risk of refoulement - return to persecution or torture. Few have access to safe housing, medical care, or work to support themselves while they wait for the United States to restore asylum processing. Expelled people are at risk of being detained and deported by Mexican immigration officials to their countries of persecution. Returning refugees to a place where they would be returned to their country of persecution (chain refoulement) violates U.S. treaty commitments.

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Recommendations

To the Biden administration:

* Immediately end the use - and withdraw - the discredited CDC order and rescind the accompanying Health and Human Services (HHS) final rule; stop refouling refugee families and adults to countries of feared persecution or places where they are at risk of life-threatening harm; and direct the CDC to employ rational, evidence-based measures to safeguard the lives of asylum seekers and protect public health rather than issuing xenophobic bans.

* Restart processing of asylum requests at the southern border, including at ports of entry, while employing effective and humane policies that uphold U.S. laws and treaties to process people seeking refugee protection, including appropriate science-based measures recommended by public health experts to safeguard public health and protect asylum seekers and CBP personnel. These include requiring social distancing, providing appropriate personal protective equipment, hand sanitizer, and testing, reducing processing delays, repurposing outdoor areas and nearby locations to facilitate distancing and ventilation, and using legal parole authority rather than congregate detention.

* Avoid use of the so-called "metering" policy to artificially reduce capacity at ports of entry to block asylum seekers from requesting refugee protection, expedited removal, or detention of asylum seekers and instead employ steps to swiftly and safely process asylum seekers at ports of entry and quickly release them using proven community-based case management programs to ensure asylum seekers are able to find attorneys and interpreters in destination locations and understand the process to apply for asylum.

* Immediately cease all expulsion flights to Haiti and other countries, designate or redesignate Temporary Protected Status for Haiti, Cameroon, and other countries where returned persons would face grave dangers; direct the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to investigate the harmful effects of the expulsion and other policies, including metering and prolonged detention, on Black asylum seekers and migrants.

* Coordinate with and provide logistical and financial support to critical service providers offering shelter, legal services, and humanitarian aid to ensure that asylum seekers are treated humanely and able to quickly and safely transit to destination locations where they can shelter with family or friends and continue the asylum process; ultimately launch a new or reconfigured and elevated U.S. agency with a humanitarian protection mission, expertise, and capacities.

* Urgently order DHS officers and employees to end mistreatment of asylum seekers and migrants under CBP and ICE custody, including physical and verbal abuse, denial of food and medical care, and destruction of personal property; direct the DHS Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties to investigate these abuses.

* End other cruel Trump-era anti-asylum policies, including fully rescinding the entry, third-country transit and other asylum bans and vacating Trump-era Attorney General rulings that rig the asylum process against refugees. DHS should also include the families and individuals who were issued in absentia decisions or otherwise unfairly denied protection under farcical MPP proceedings, who have not been included in the MPP wind down so far. Provide redress for asylum seekers denied a fair opportunity to pursue requests for U.S. refugee protection under Trump and Biden administration policies that have blocked, turned back, and expelled them to danger.

* Address human rights abuses in the countries refugees are fleeing and support regional resettlement initiatives to provide other pathways to safety.

To the U.S. Congress:

* Withhold appropriations used to carry out expulsions under Title 42, and any other programs or policies that violate U.S. legal obligations to protect refugees; provide needed support for existing non-profit service providers and local communities - at the border and in the interior - that are welcoming and caring for asylum seekers.

* Hold oversight hearings to establish accountability for violations of U.S. refugee law and treaty obligations and harms to refugees, including the harmful effects of the expulsion policy and other policies, including metering and prolonged detention, on Black asylum seekers and migrants.

* Conduct official visits to Mexican border towns, CBP facilities and Border Patrol stations on the southern border, and immigration courts, to ensure DHS does not continue to violate U.S. law and treaty obligations.

* Examine potential structural improvements to manage humanitarian protection, such as a new or reconfigured and elevated U.S. agency with a humanitarian protection mission, expertise, and capacities.

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The full white paper can be viewed at: https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/FailuretoProtect.4.20.21.pdf

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