Showing posts with label asylum-seekers. Show all posts

Friday, August 9, 2019

ANALYSIS AND BREAKING: Mexico detains migrant children in cramped holding center despite court ruling

August 10, 2019 001h12 GMT/ZULU

by Renee Celeste and Biodun Iginla, BBC News and Reuters News Analysts, Mexico City

MEXICO CITY - Overcrowding, prison-like conditions, bed bugs and illness are among the complaints of migrants in a Mexico City detention center that holds dozens of minors two months after a court ruled it was unconstitutional.

Under the threat of economic sanctions from U.S. President Donald Trump, Mexico has stepped up migrant detentions this year to stem a surge in asylum-seekers from Central America.

Known as Las Agujas, the Mexico City holding center enclosed by spike-topped walls in the eastern district of Iztapalapa held about 108 minors as of this week, some of whom are unaccompanied, said Jesus Quintana, who monitors the station for the Mexican human rights ombudsman’s office (CNDH).

In June, a court ruled it unconstitutional for Las Agujas to hold children after a 10-year-old Guatemalan girl died in its custody. Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM), which runs the center, has not appealed the decision, but told us at Reuters that it observes the laws protecting migrants in “each and every case”.

Las Agujas is part of a network of centers the government has vowed to upgrade. The detention of minors has increased concerns about treatment of migrants by the Mexican government in its push to reduce the flow of people north.

“What they have are facilities similar to prisons,” said Ana Saiz, director of Sin Fronteras, one of four migrant advocacy groups that took Las Agujas to court after the Guatemalan girl died in May. “This practice (of detaining children) goes against human rights and is illegal in Mexico.”

The government said the girl, who was held with her mother, died in official custody after falling out of a bunk bed at the center, which has a capacity of 464 people.

On June 10, a panel of judges ordered Las Agujas to stop holding children, citing migration laws and minors’ rights.

On July 24, an administrative court said the director of Las Agujas, Miguel Angel Hernandez, had not heeded the order, referencing five unaccompanied minors from India at the center.

Hernandez told the court he had complied by re-housing 38 minors identified by the groups that brought the case, court documents seen by Reuters show. The INM said on July 27 that it “at no time failed to comply with a court order”.

In a statement, the INM said it prioritized family unity, and that unaccompanied minors are only in the centers “temporarily.”

Hernandez could not be reached directly for comment.

CRYING CHILDREN

Mexican government figures show 32,507 migrating minors were detained between January and June 2019.

The migration authority picks up minors along with adults, said Rosalba Rivera, migrant children’s coordinator at the Institute for Migrant Women.

Rivera said the INM sometimes contacts the national agency for family development to find alternative housing for children, such as shelters, once they are in facilities like Las Agujas.

But Mexican law is explicit that migrant children should not spend “even a day” in detention, she added.

In the United States, unaccompanied minors can be held in border patrol custody for 72 hours before being transferred to children’s shelters.

Detainees and visitors told us at Reuters that minors are still being brought to Las Agujas.

Guarded watch towers overlook the four corners of the high-walled compound in the heart of a residential neighborhood. Its concrete walls and green metal spikes contrast with a flower-muraled elementary school down the block.

Detainees often cannot leave for weeks or months before they are deported or file for asylum, according to monitoring groups.

A July report from a federal watchdog found the center to be over capacity, ridden with bed bugs and short of food.

The INM told us at Reuters that each of the center’s detainees is given basic hygiene equipment, drinking water and three meals a day. It did not respond to the bed bug or capacity claims.

“The kids cry all the time,” said a Venezuelan migrant in his 30s who left Las Agujas recently. He spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals from authorities.

He described a crowded, “prison-like” facility and said he often saw a long line of mothers and their kids waiting to see a doctor, since children often fell ill.

Sister Maria Josefa Martinez, a nun who visits the center weekly, said children “have a hard time,” often getting stomach and throat infections, and have little to do.

Saiz of Sin Fronteras said her staff learned of a chicken pox outbreak among children in the center on a visit in July.

Without commenting on the illnesses, the INM said Las Agujas provides free medical assistance to detainees 24 hours a day.

Tuesday, July 16, 2019

ANALYSIS: America: Another brick in the wall

by Melissa Gruz and Biodun Iginla, The Economist Intelligence Unit News Analysts

America closes the doors to asylum-seekers from the South

A new rule issued by the White House effectively prevents Latin Americans from claiming asylum at the southern border

Democracy in America

Jul 16th 2019

by A.R.

COUNT THE ways in which the government under President Donald Trump has grown more hostile to foreigners who seek sanctuary. For years America led the world, resettling more persecuted people as refugees than any other country. During the Cold War, especially, welcoming asylum seekers from countries under Soviet oppression sent a message that American democracy was more self-confident and open than any rival political system. Few arrived at a land border; most were processed by officials overseas: for example, the “boat people” who fled war in Vietnam, were processed in South East Asia and transferred as refugees to America in the 1970s. More recently Somalis fleeing conflict in the Horn of Africa, or victims of persecution in the Middle East, found homes in America.
Mr Trump has already dramatically cut how many are resettled in this way. Last fiscal year just 22,500 refugees were resettled in America (Canada now accepts more). That was down from 110,000 who were expected (by Barack Obama’s administration) for fiscal 2017. Yet as the number of resettled refugees fell, and amid efforts to deter and deport unauthorised immigrants, there was a surge in asylum applications at America’s southern border. Most were people fleeing central America, notably El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Many say, plausibly, that they are escaping widespread criminal violence and the threat of abduction or murder by gangs. In practice, distinguishing between such cases and plain economic migrants is hard.

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Relatively few have been processed, so as a big backlog has built up, thousands of people have been stranded in northern Mexico, where applications for asylum are considered. That has added to a widespread impression of a crisis at the border. Mr Trump responded this week with a new interim order, one issued without congressional approval. Under this, a person who crosses through a third country—for example, a Guatemalan who passes through Mexico en route to America—may no longer seek asylum. The new rule insists that an individual must have sought asylum in that third country, and been rejected, before moving on to try for sanctuary in America. It will apply to unaccompanied children, as well as adults.
Only three exceptions to the new rule are allowed. It will not apply to victims of trafficking, to the tiny numbers of people who seek to reach America by sea, or to those who arrive in the United States having only passed through countries that have not signed the UN refugee convention or the convention against torture, such as North Korea.
The UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, has said it is “deeply concerned” by the interim rule. It might well be. The UN’s refugee convention allows for refugees to pass through third countries—think of Vietnamese boat people who initially went to Thailand or other parts of Asia—before lodging an asylum appeal elsewhere. Remove that principle and the effect is to tell the (mostly poor) countries next door to war-torn or violent ones that only they, and not rich ones, have a duty to help refugees. The governments of Central America will not go along with this. Mexico’s government has rejected the proposal as “severe” and “not the best way forward”. A court in Guatemala has prevented that country from agreeing to act as a “safe third country” to which America can deport asylum-seekers.
The American Civil Liberties Union has said the rule, which takes force on July 16th, is “patently unlawful” and it will sue to scrap it. Democrats, too, are opposed. Mr Trump may be calculating that a dust-up over this issue will help him politically, even if he loses. If a court or Congress were to overturn the rule, that could energise his nativist base: 73% of those who voted for Mr Trump in 2016 “strongly approve” of his handling of immigration; only 4% “strongly disapprove” and most of the remainder are supportive. On the campaign trail next year, he will doubtless tell voters that only he can be trusted to keep outsiders from gaming the immigration system.
The Migration Policy Institute (MPI), a think-tank in Washington, notes that Mr Trump’s new policy is similar to one that Europeans have long pursued. In Norway, for example, anyone arriving at its border after first passing through neighbouring Russia (as some Syrians did in 2015) is denied asylum because Russia has been declared a safe third country for refugees. Similarly the Dublin convention in Europe insists that those seeking asylum within the EU must apply in their first country of arrival—a rule that (if properly applied) would place most of the burden of processing them on countries with a Mediterranean coastline, such as Italy and Greece, and hardly any on northern countries. On an even larger scale, European countries give large amounts of foreign aid to the third countries through which refugees typically pass, such as Turkey and Libya, so that those countries will stop the refugees from crossing the Mediterranean. Australia, too, has paid for third countries in the Pacific to host asylum seekers who had tried to get down under.
The lessons from these international examples are complicated, says the MPI. It is not clear that safe third-country agreements are implemented effectively—few asylum-seekers actually get returned from EU countries to Turkey, for example. And if the real point of such deals were to deter asylum seekers from making journeys in the first place, then it is not obvious that it works. Unless the third countries use rather brutal force to detain asylum seekers, as Turkey and Libya do, then the flow of people tends to continue. Big payments, in the form of billions of dollars in foreign aid, are essential for buying co-operation from countries (or even warlords) who operate at a distance from Europe’s borders, clamping down on asylum seekers out of sight of European eyes. For the safe third country system to work, in other words, it seems to need willing and rather authoritarian partners who will lock up asylum seekers or otherwise prevent their movement. The proposed solution to the increase in asylum seekers thus relies on the very thing the system was originally intended to undermine.

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Tuesday, July 2, 2019

Mexico deports 33 percent more migrants after deal with US

Date created : 03/07/2019 - 05H37 GMT/ZULU

Some of the 250 Central American migrants arrested during an operation in Veracruz, Mexico, are pictured in June 2019 AFP/File

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Mexico City

by Renee Celeste and Biodun Iginla, France24

Mexico deported 33 percent more foreigners month-on-month in June, officials said Tuesday, after the country agreed to take "unprecedented" steps to reduce migration in order to avoid tariffs threatened by US President Donald Trump.

The total number of deportations from Mexico in June was 21,912, up from 16,507 in May, according to preliminary figures from the Mexican migration authority.

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The upswing came after Trump threatened in May to impose tariffs on all Mexican goods if the country did not do more to slow the flow of Central American migrants crossing the US-Mexican border.

After a week of tense negotiations, the two sides announced a deal on June 7 under which Mexico agreed to send thousands of National Guardsmen to secure its borders and expand its policy of taking back asylum-seekers while the US processes their claims.

The deal appears to be delivering Trump's desired result: the number of migrants taken into custody at the US southern border is expected to drop by 25 percent for June, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kevin McAleenan, said Friday.

Under the deal, Mexico has 45 days to show results.

Trump said Monday in Washington that Mexico is doing a "great job."

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has sought to avoid confrontation with the Republican billionaire, welcomed the comment.

"I'm glad President Trump recognizes that we're making an effort to live up to our commitment to apply our laws and, without violating human rights, reduce the flow of migrants," he told a news conference.

Lopez Obrador, an anti-establishment leftist, took office in December promising to welcome migrants. But he has taken a more hardline turn under pressure from Trump.

In his first month in office, Mexico deported 5,717 foreigners -- down from 10,180 the month before.

However, deportations rose sharply after Trump renewed his threat to close the US-Mexican border.

In April -- the month after Trump made the threat -- deportations from Mexico rose 66 percent, to 14,940.

The United States has seen a surge in Central American asylum-seekers fleeing chronic poverty and brutal gang violence in recent months. In May, it apprehended 144,000 migrants at the border, up 32 percent from April and 278 percent from May 2018.

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Frustration and sadness as Italy migrant centre closed

Date created : 25/01/2019 - 08:27 GMT/UTC/ZULU

Migrants and asylum-seekers were given 48 hours notice of the centre's closure, and the authorities began the evacuation of 500 people, including 120 women and 14 children AFP

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Castelnuovo di Porto (Italy)

by Elodie Bagnol and Biodun Iginla, France24

"I found a family here, I worked with the parish priest, I helped with mass, I went to school," said Nigerian Anthony Ehikwe, one of hundreds of migrants being expelled from Italy's second-largest migrant centre. "And now I do not even have the time to say goodbye."

Italian authorities are this week removing migrants from the reception centre at Castelnuovo di Porto, just north of Rome, after far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini's tough anti-migrant decree became law.

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"You can change immigration policies but you can't just throw people out into the street like that," said an angry Riccardo Travaglini, mayor of this town of 9,000 people.

"Here, we've done a lot to welcome people and, within a few hours, they decide to dismantle our community," he said.

The new law, which came into effect in December, ends two-year "humanitarian protection" residency permits -- a lower level of asylum status based on Italian rather than international law -- that were awarded to 25 percent of asylum seekers last year.

The Italian Refugee Council has said it was "seriously concerned" by the new legislation which "will put thousands of people outside the law and only a very few can be repatriated."

"I do not think it's about security because sadly in a few months we will see the effects of this chaos they are creating on purpose," said the centre's legal advisor Rosanna Just.

"The only result is that they destroyed something that worked very well."

The law also reorganises asylum-seeker management by closing large reception centres like Castelnuovo, which Salvini says are expensive and breeding grounds for criminals.

Migrants and asylum-seekers were given 48 hours notice of the centre's closure, and on Tuesday the authorities began the evacuation of 500 people, including 120 women and 14 children.

Some have been taken to reception centres elsewhere in the country, while others have preferred to head for Rome on foot before they are taken away.

- Pope's visit -

"After having accompanied them, sometimes for years, on a path of integration, we had to tell them that they have to go, without even knowing their destination," said Just.

"The children were attending school, some (of the migrants) even had work and from one day to the next it's all taken away," she said.

Dozens of the town's Italian's residents on Tuesday protested against the closure of the centre, which opened in a very different political climate 10 years ago.

Pope Francis visited in 2016, celebrating mass and famously washing the feet of 11 migrants of different religions.

"It will be difficult to rebuild all this somewhere else," said Ehikwe, 27.

"I've been living here for two years, I don't know where I'll be sent, I don't know what will happen," said Ehikwe, a Roman Catholic who fled religious persecution in Nigeria, making the treacherous crossing of the Mediterranean from Libya to Italy.

"This is a common sense operation that will save Italians six million euros ($6.8 million) a year without taking anyone's rights away," Salvini said on Wednesday.

Sunday, November 25, 2018

BREAKING AND UPDATE: US closes Mexico border crossing after migrant protest halted in Tijuana

by Renee Celeste and Biodun Iginla, France24, Tijuana (Mexico). San Ysidrio (United States)

Video by FRANCE 24

Latest update : 2018-11-26

U.S. authorities shut the country's busiest border crossing and fired tear gas into Mexico on Sunday to repel Central American migrants approaching the border after President Donald Trump vowed the asylum-seekers would not easily enter the country.

Traffic in both directions was suspended for several hours at the San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego and Tijuana, U.S. officials said, disrupting trade at the most heavily trafficked land border in the Western Hemisphere.

Pedestrian crossings and vehicle traffic later resumed, officials said.

Tensions on the border had been rising in recent days, with thousands of Central American migrants who arrived in a caravan camped out in a sports stadium in Tijuana.

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On Sunday, Mexican police broke up the latest in a series of daily protests, triggering a rush toward the U.S. border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stopped the migrants with a volley of canisters emitting large clouds of gas as U.S. and Mexican government helicopters clattered overhead.

The Mexican government said it had retaken control of the border crossing after nearly 500 migrants tried to cross the U.S. border "in a violent manner," and vowed to immediately deport Central Americans who attempt to enter the United States illegally.

FRANCE 24'S ALYSSA CAVERLEY REPORTS

Trump has raised alarm for weeks about the caravan of Central American migrants as it approached the United States, with its members planning to apply for asylum on reaching the country.

The mostly Honduran migrants are fleeing poverty and violence and have said they would wait in Tijuana until they could request asylum in the United States, despite growing U.S. measures to tighten the border.

Hundreds of caravan members including women and children protested peacefully on Sunday with chants of "We aren't criminals! We are hard workers."

As they neared the U.S. border, they were stopped by Mexican authorities, who told them to wait for permission.

As the morning wore on, and it became clear they would not get permission, people started to express frustration.

Military police deployed

Groups of migrants, some of them bearing the Honduran flag, broke off and headed toward the border fence, where U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers gathered on the other side, backed by U.S. military police, San Diego police and the California Highway Patrol.

The Americans responded with tear gas after the migrants hit them with projectiles, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said on Twitter.

"Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas to dispel the group because of the risk to agents' safety," the statement said.

Protesters were caught between the Mexican and U.S. authorities. A young woman fell to the ground unconscious, and two babies cried, tears streaming from the gas, a Reuters witness said.

"They want us to wait in Mexico but I for one am desperate. My little girl is sick and I don't even have money for milk," said Joseph Garcia, 32, of Honduras. "I can't stand it anymore."

Trump has deployed military forces to the border to support the Border Patrol and threatened on Saturday to close the entire southern border.

Military police were sent to the border crossing and military engineers moved barricades as part of the enforcement, the U.S. Northern Command said in a statement on Sunday.

"Department of Defense military personnel will not be conducting law enforcement functions, but are authorized to provide force protection for Customs and Border Protection personnel," the statement said.

An average of 70,000 vehicles and 20,000 pedestrians cross from Mexico to the United States at San Ysidro each day, according to the U.S. General Services Administration.

Duncan Wood, director of the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center research group in Washington, called the closure a "drastic response" and said it would cost "many millions of dollars."

U.S. and Mexican negotiators met on Sunday to discuss a plan to keep the Central Americans in Mexico while their asylum claims are heard.

Normally, asylum-seekers announce their intention on arriving at U.S. ports of entry or after crossing the border illegally.

Trump has been pushing for a U.S.-Mexico border wall and warned on Thursday there could be a government shutdown next month if the U.S. Congress failed to provide funding.

Sunday's events took place at one of the stretches where there is a physical border barrier.

Date created : 2018-11-25