The U.S. Supreme Court’s clearing of the way for the Trump administration to deny nearly all asylum requests from Central Americans and certain other migrants spread fear along the border Thursday and was denounced by activists as a “death sentence” for those trying to escape poverty and violence.
The new policy would deny refuge to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without first seeking asylum there.
Migrants who make their way to the U.S. overland from places like Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador would be largely ineligible, along with asylum seekers from Africa, Asia and South America who try to get in by way of the U.S.-Mexican border.
“Our Supreme Court is sentencing people to death. There are no safeguards, no institutions to stop this cruelty,” the immigration-assistance group Al Otro Lado said.
The Mexican government likewise called the high court’s action “astonishing.” The effects of the new policy could fall heavily on Mexico, leaving the country with tens of thousands of poor and desperate migrants with no hope of getting into the U.S.
Acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan called the Supreme Court’s go-ahead a “big victory” in the Trump administration’s attempt to curb the flow of migrants.
In Tijuana, Dunea Romero, a 31-year-old Honduran woman, started to tear up at the thought of not being allowed to take refuge in the U.S. She said she packed a bag and fled her homeland with her two boys, ages 7 and 11, after hearing that her ex-husband, a powerful gang leader, was going to have her killed.
“I did this so I didn’t lose my life,” she said. “I didn’t want to leave my sons without a mother.”
A Nicaraguan who has been waiting in Ciudad Juarez to request asylum in the U.S. could be among those who would be affected. He said he fled his home country after running afoul of the Nicaraguan government with many acts of civil disobedience.
He passed through Honduras on his way to the border, meaning he would have to return to that violence-ridden country under the new rule. He asked that his name not be used because a past news report quoting him led to retaliation against relatives in Nicaragua.
“The president of Nicaragua is friends with the president of Honduras, and what the Honduran president could do is send all of the Nicaraguans back to their country,” he said. “And me, setting foot in Nicaragua again, what could happen to me is I could get locked up, be detained, and processed in Nicaragua for the crimes that they accuse me of – terrorism and high treason against the government of Nicaragua.”