Approximately five-hundred violent acts have been acted against refuge-seekers who were declined passage into the United States from the southern border since Biden was elected president, reported by Human Rights First, Haitian Bridge Alliance, and Al Otro Lado.
The report titled, “Failure to Protect: Biden Administration Continues Illegal Trump Policy to Block and Expel Asylum Seekers to Danger” found at least four-hundred ninety-two violent acts that directly target refuge-seekers who had been barred from requesting refuge protection at the U.S.-Mexico border or were removed. The violent assaults include kidnapping, rape, and assault.
The numbers go off on more than a hundred interviews and an electronic surveys of somewhere around twelve hundred thousand refuge-seekers in the Mexican state of Baja California, reported by the Intercept.
The report noted that families are still being separated, and the illegal expulsions policy continues to endanger unattended adolescents, and claimed that some adolescents are being removed from the United States without properly screening for trafficking risk.
CBP declared there were 18,890 unattended adolescents found by U.S. border authorities in March — a 100% increase over February. There were also 53,000 family unit aliens found at the southern border in March, and over 172,000 people total tried to have entry into the United States.
Human Rights First interviewed over one hundred fifty refuge-seekers in March and April, none of which were able to apply for refuge or given a protection screening by U.S. immigration officers before being returned to Mexico.
The Biden admin has barred and removed refuge-seeking families and adults from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cuba, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Russia, Somalia, Venezuela, and Yemen. African, Caribbean and other Black refuge seekers and migrants have been left pretty vulnerable by this policy, suffering anti-Black violence and discrimination while left at the border for months or even years, Human Rights First reported.
As of February, there were around16,250 refuge-seekers on waiting lists in nine Mexican border cities, reported by the University of Texas’ Strauss Center. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection practices “metering,” which turns away “thousands of people who come to ports of entry seeking protection,” reported by the American Immigration Council. “Under metering, CBP officers assert a lack of capacity to refuse to inspect and process asylum seekers, requiring them to wait for weeks or months in Mexico just for the opportunity to start the asylum process.”
The report shines a light on a Guatemalan family with a 6-year-old child who were kidnapped at a Mexican bus station in February soon after Border Patrol removed them out of the United States. The family was held for a ransom. The report also cited a Washington Post article about a ten year old boy and his mother from Nicaragua being kidnapped hours after being removed to Mexico in March.
One refuge-seeker told Human Rights First that “Border Patrol agents told her that ‘the new president isn’t taking anyone’ and that she should present herself ‘legally’ even though ports of entry were, and remain, closed to asylum seekers in violation of U.S. law, which guarantees access to asylum to individuals at the border, including at ports of entry.”
To ease the current border crisis, Human Rights First requests that the Biden administration put an end to Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention public health order that is used to ban refuge-seekers into the United States when the CDC director believes that “there is serious danger of the introduction of [a communicable] disease into the United States.”
On March 20, 2020, the Department of Health and Human Services implemented section 265 of U.S. Code Title 42, which gave Border Patrol powers to expel “individuals who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border, without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.” The Biden administration amended Title 42 to allow entrance for unattended migrant adolescents.
Despite his promises to reverse President Trump’s cruelty at the border, President Biden is continuing a policy that is creating havoc. The policy puts children in danger, separates families, and illegally returns refuge seekers to danger, including Black and LGBTQ refugees forced to go through bias-motivated violence in Mexico, Human Rights First claimed.