Trump Administration’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy Immediately Comes Under Fire

The Trump administration’s latest gambit to erode
constitutional and legal protections for asylum-seekers will be tested in the
courts, and if recent experience is any indicator, Trump’s probably going to
lose. Again.

On Thursday, the Trump administration announced a new policy
that would require asylum-seekers at the southern U.S. border to
remain in Mexico while the U.S. processes those requests. The move could
endanger the lives of thousands of migrants, and it isn’t clear how it would
even work, or if Mexico is on board with the decision.

In an analysis by The Daily Beast, immigration advocates
said the Department of Homeland Security’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, as it is
known informally, violates
the Constitution, international treaties, and federal law.

“Pushing asylum-seekers back into Mexico is absolutely
illegal under U.S. immigration law,” Human Rights First’s senior director for
refugee protection, Eleanor Acer, told The Daily Beast. “This scheme will
increase, rather than decrease, the humanitarian debacle at the border.

Testifying
before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, Homeland
Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the government’s “Catch and
release” program would be replaced with “catch and return.”

But there is a fundamental flaw with that strategy, as The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer points
out: “[P]eople who are fleeing for their lives cannot be turned away
without a chance to plead their case.”

The Trump administration already has failed at several
attempts to thwart people from seeking asylum in the U.S. The latest defeat in
court happened on Friday, when the U.S.
Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against the administration’s attempt to temporarily
reinstate a ban on asylum applications by migrants who crossed the border
outside an official point of entry, while the underlying case proceeds in
court.

In addition to complicated logistics—such as how
asylum-seekers would meet with their lawyers or hold hearings with immigration
judges while in Mexico—the dangers of “Remain in Mexico” policy became
glaringly clear this week when two Honduran teenagers who were part of the
migrant caravan were stabbed
and strangled to death by would-be robbers in Tijuana.

Per PRI, which reported on the teenagers’ deaths:

The boys’ deaths are a sobering reminder of the dangers
asylum-seekers may face while waiting in violent Mexican border regions, where
cartels and smugglers have big operations. Migrants are especially vulnerable
to being kidnapped and held hostage for ransom by criminal groups because they
don’t have ties to the community or a safe place to sleep. Fear of such crimes
is what led thousands of Central Americans to travel to Tijuana, which borders
San Diego, California, instead of the much closer Texas border crossings — because,
while dangerous, Tijuana is less dangerous than areas along the Texas border.

None of this seems to matter to Nielsen, who is more
concerned about “aliens trying to game the system…” But it does matter to law
experts and immigration advocates. Human Rights First’s Kennji Kizuka told The
Daily Beast that, “The administration seems to have no plan for implementation.”

“All of our organizations have been on the ground in Tijuana
recently and are united in our assessment that conditions there are very
unstable and very unsafe,” Kids in Need of Defense President Wendy Young added,
according to the news site.

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt told USA Today, “This plan cannot
be done lawfully.”

Lawmakers will weigh in on the issue when Democrats take
control of the House in January. Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler, who is the
incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, told Nielsen, “I want to put you and the
department on notice: The time for accountability has arrived.”

He added,
according to USA Today, “The Trump administration, including DHS under your watch, has launched a relentless attack against immigrants of all stripes. The time for zero accountability is over.”