Border Report: One More Way the Pandemic Is Hurting Asylum-Seekers

The coronavirus has impacted migrants in Tijuana in many ways. Most shelters in the city have closed their doors to new people to protect those staying there from the virus, creating a bed shortage. The pandemic has also made it difficult economically, so migrants — like everyone else — have struggled to find work to pay for rent and food.

But migrants are also facing other challenges when it comes to their legal ability to remain in Mexico, said Graciela Zamudio, executive director of Alma Migrante, an organization that provides legal assistance to migrants in Tijuana.

So far in 2020, 868 migrants have been arrested and deported from Baja California, El Sol de Tijuana reports. Of those, 177 are Honduran, 120 are Haitian and 107 are Guatemalan.

Zamudio said the Mexican government has stopped renewing temporary humanitarian visas that were given to asylum-seekers when they entered the country. Her organization is currently looking at potentially challenging more than a dozen such cases in court.

When asylum-seekers arrive in Mexico, they typically receive a regulatory card that grants them permission to be there for a year. If they need another one-year extension after that, they must apply within 30 days of it expiring. But as people apply for extensions, Zamudio said, the Mexican government has issued orders to leave the country within 40 days.

“They are leaving people without protection in the middle of the pandemic,” Zamudio said.

She’s been trying to work with immigration officials to resolve the issue, she said.

“We are trying to write them a proposal to extend the cards without migrants having to do anything — the same way they did when the caravans arrived,” Zamudio said.

She said that she is trying to ensure that the Mexican government also won’t extend visas solely on the basis of the pandemic because she is concerned that when the pandemic ends, migrants may be left without legal permission to be in Mexico and have to go through the process all over again. Many of the U.S. immigration and border policies that have forced asylum-seekers to wait months and months in Mexico have nothing to do with the pandemic.

“The fact that these people came in the caravan and still haven’t found proper inclusion in society says it all,” Zamudio said. “The pandemic is an important issue, but it’s not the only one. We need to use it as something that makes the situation more grave, rather than the only reason to give them protection.”

If her organization can’t resolve the issue with officials, Alma Migrante may have to turn to litigation, as it’s done in other matters.

In the spring, Alma Migrante and other groups sued to improve safety in migrant detention facilities in Baja California. In April, a Baja California judge said the government needed to adopt specific measures to safeguard the health and safety of migrants, which it has since done.

But Zamudio said orders in different parts of the country went different ways. An order in Mexico City, for instance, was even more forceful, while some of the decisions in southern states sided with the government. Courts have also had trouble enforcing the orders and continuing to receive information from the government about migrants in its custody, she said.

In Other Asylum News

• The U.N. refugee agency said it is setting up 48 temporary housing units for refugees and asylum-seekers in Mexico, including some in Tijuana. (Associated Press)
• The United States is set to become one of just four countries to charge asylum-seekers a fee to apply for humanitarian protections, under a Department of Homeland Security policy announced last week.

Hospital General Is Drowning

Doctors and nurses at Tijuana’s Hospital General pleaded for help in an open letter published on Facebook, saying they lack medication and equipment to treat patients, reports Cadena Noticias.

The hospital has an occupancy of over 90 percent and has had more than 80 deaths in three weeks, Zeta reports. Family members also told Zeta they’ve paid up to 20,000 pesos for COVID-19 treatment and, even then, the lives of their loved ones couldn’t be saved.

Border Agent Controversies

• U.S. Customs and Border Protection supplied munitions that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department used to disperse crowds during protests in late May and early June. (KPBS)
• U.S. border officials’ killing of a man at the San Diego-Tijuana border a decade ago will go on trial before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. (Union-Tribune)

More Border News

• For the first time, Latinos are the largest group of students admitted to the University of California system. Here is the story of one of those students, who after her mother was deported when she was 7, commuted from Tijuana to go to school in San Diego. (EdSource)
• The Port of San Diego received approval from U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the city of San Diego to activate a Foreign Trade Zone at the Tenth Avenue Marine Terminal, which will allow duty reductions and other savings to businesses. (Times of San Diego)
• Parents of disappeared children took to a remote hill in eastern Tijuana to search for their remains after discovering dozens of bodies buried there. For many parents with missing children, these searches have become a response to what they describe as a failure by the Mexican government to protect or search for their children. (Union-Tribune)
• The U.S. Supreme Court allowed President Donald Trump to continue to spend more than $6 billion of diverted military funds to pay for the construction of a border wall in parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California. (Los Angeles Times)
• Coronavirus-related border restrictions are straining families with lives on both sides. (Union-Tribune)
• Municipalities in Baja California, except Playas de Rosarito, are hiding information about federal resources dedicated to public safety, according to the Baja California Citizens Council for Public Security. (RadarBC)
• According to two state senators, the government of Baja California Gov. Jaime Bonilla has received more than 20 billion pesos’ worth of federal resources, which are being used on a discretionary basis without any transparency. (Radar BC)
• In an excerpt from her upcoming book “Hatemonger,” KPBS border reporter Jean Guerrero introduces the anti-immigration activist who’s primed Stephen Miller since high school. You can read more about Guerrero’s book on Miller, a Trump adviser, here. (Politico, Union-Tribune)
• Enrollment centers for Trusted Traveler Programs, such as SENTRI or Global Entry, will remain closed until at least Sept. 8 due to coronavirus concerns. (Union-Tribune)