The majority of MPP subjects originate from Honduras, Guatemala, Cuba, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Venezuela, in that order. The absence of documentation to prove their unique MPP status while in Mexico leaves them at risk of exploitation from informal work and vulnerable to unlawful deportation. Source: Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Details on MPP Proceedings, https://trac.syr.edu/phptools/immigration/mpp/. Specifically, the policy could violate non-refoulement – an obligation under international law that forbids the involuntary return of refugees to a territory where their lives or liberty might be at risk. Smoke drifts up from small wood stoves and camp fires.

sent back under MPP is unclear. If the officer determines that an asylum seeker’s fear is credible, they are placed into removal proceedings where they can file an asylum application in front of an immigration judge. It is run by the private prison profiteer CoreCivic. The Asylum Transit Ban makes no exceptions, however, for unaccompanied children; even though the Immigration and Nationality Act provides special paths to asylum for unaccompanied children, who are allowed to apply for asylum outside of the immigration court process. CBP also retains discretion to take any individual out of MPP on a case-by-case basis.

1331 G St. NW, Suite 200, Washington, D.C., 20005 | 202-507-7500 Registered 501(c)(3). The number of migrants arriving at the southern border has dropped steadily for the past eight months, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics. MPP marks a fundamental shift towards the dismantling of the asylum system in the U.S. and is a glaring violation of the right to international protection and non-refoulement. Individuals sent to the Laredo or Brownsville courts must reside or pass through the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which the State Department classifies as the same level of danger as Syria, Afghanistan, and Yemen. Bravo means fierce in this context: A few paces from where this Salvadoran asylum seeker was doing the day’s laundry, the current had swept a father and his infant daughter to their deaths last June.

Figure 3 then details exactly who is subject to these policies, at least in principle.

Even tourists or international students who travel from the United States to Mexico and back through the border could find themselves permanently banned from asylum. %%EOF The river was the perfect metaphor for the refugee camp that has sprung up along its banks. You don’t just shut it down and turn them all away.”, Ms. D’Cruz has been working in Matamoros six days a week for four months. The situation is starkly different for immigrants required to stay in Mexico: a startling 50 percent have failed to show up for a hearing, which led to a judge closing the case with an in absentia decision. There are no lights in the camp, and anyone can walk into any tent at any time. The border wall cuts across the land between the U.S. and Mexico, separating two worlds. Her black hair is streaked with gray, and as she pours some of her tea she jokes that she’s become her mother. MPP is a systematic violation of human rights, due process, and the right to asylum under international law, namely the principle of non-refoulement defined in the 1951 Geneva Convention and the 1967 Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees, to which the U.S. is one of 146 signatories.[i].