Daily Times

The Trump administration’s policy of returning asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases wind through immigration courts violates US law by putting the migrants in danger and depriving them of the ability to prepare their cases, a lawsuit filed Thursday by civil liberties groups claims.

The lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco seeks a court order blocking the Department of Homeland Security from carrying out the policy that took effect in January at the San Ysidro border crossing in San Diego.

The launch followed months of delicate talks between the US and Mexico and marked a change to the US asylum system that the administration and asylum experts said was unprecedented.

Mexican officials have sent mixed signals on the crucial point of whether Mexico would impose limits on accepting families. The plan began in San Diego with adults only, but US officials have always insisted it would include families, which currently account for nearly half of Border Patrol arrests. The lawsuit says the first asylum-seeking families were returned to Tijuana on Wednesday, including one with a 1-year-old child.

“Instead of being able to focus on preparing their cases, asylum seekers forced to return to Mexico will have to focus on trying to survive,” according to the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies. “These pressures may deter even those with the strongest asylum claims to give up, rather than endure the wait under such conditions.” Steven Stafford, a spokesman for the US Department of Justice, said Congress has “explicitly authorized” Homeland Security officials to return migrants to a “contiguous foreign territory” during their immigration proceedings.

Published in Daily Times, February 16^th 2019.