Asylum seekers fleeing to the U.S from danger at home face violent attacks in Mexico
Human Rights First reports that migrants waiting to enter the U.S. are suffering violent attacks and threats in Mexico, Hope for Justice provides recommendations for a U.S. anti-trafficking bill, and Terre des Hommes repatriates 35 exploited children from Uganda’s Karamoja region.
According to a new report, the Washington-based organization Human Rights First has registered 6,356 violent attacks against migrants in Mexico since January – a number that is rising at a rapid rate. These attacks include rape, kidnapping, extortion, human trafficking and other assaults against those who are deported to Mexico from the U.S. or are turned away from its border under Title 42, a health ordinance implemented during the coronavirus pandemic.
The report warns that, in recent months, almost 83 per cent of asylum seekers who have been returned to Mexico have experienced attacks or threats against them, according to data from a survey conducted from mid-June to mid-August. As well as migrant surveys, the report is also based on interviews with asylum seekers, press reports, and information provided by lawyers and humanitarian aid groups.
“Since few people complain to the authorities, we believe this figure does not represent the full extent of what is happening at the border,” Ana Ortega-Villegas, an advocacy strategist at Human Rights First, said in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. Observers point out that people fleeing violence and threats to their lives in their home countries are now being pushed into an even more dangerous situation.
According to the researchers, the extensive control exercised by cartels in vast swaths of the territory, and the complicity of the Mexican authorities, are evidence that U.S. policies which force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico put migrants, lawyers and humanitarian groups at risk.
Without immigration status or authorization to work in Mexico, asylum seekers often end up in dangerous accommodation where they are vulnerable to abuse, including informal encampments near ports of entry and unsafe migrant shelters in places such as Ciudad Acuña, Mexicali, Miguel Alemán, Nuevo Laredo, and Tijuana. Criminal organizations, the police, and other government officials target these shelters and kidnap, beat, rob, and threaten the migrants staying there. Asylum seekers have been held against their will, assaulted and extorted by individuals who offered to rent them rooms.
The research data also reveals that 89 per cent of people from the LGBTQ community who participated in the surveys were attacked or have received threats in recent months. Eunice Rendón, an academic and international consultant on migration issues who studies the flow of people in regions such as Ciudad Juárez, says that, furthermore, nearly 20 per cent of migrants who are returned to Mexico after seeking asylum or trying to enter the U.S. are infected with COVID-19.
The investigation was released as the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Biden administration’s request to pause the implementation of the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy. This decision means that U.S. authorities will have to resume the practice of returning asylum seekers at the border to Mexico, while they wait for their cases to be processed in American immigration courts. It is estimated that more than 70,000 migrants — mostly Central Americans, but also Cubans, Venezuelans and people of other nationalities — were returned to Mexico by the Trump administration during the implementation of this program in 2019. In July this year, the number of U.S. authority encounters with migrants soared to more than 212,000, although the Department of Homeland Security has said that many of these encounters involve the same migrants crossing the border multiple times.
Here’s a round-up of other noteworthy news and initiatives:
This week’s episode of Labor of Loss looks at a type of exploitation faced by women and girls in particular: forced marriage. We go on a harrowing journey with Srey Pov, a young woman from Cambodia who was told she’d be working in Chinese shoe factory but instead was forced into marriage. We ask: what’s the best way to help those who fall into deceptive and often abusive marriages? And what’s life like after returning home? We hear from frontline responders Blue Dragon Children's Foundation as well as three researchers across the region to find out.
Hope for Justice, a non-profit group which runs anti-trafficking programs in the United States and six other countries, has strongly endorsed the Frederick Douglass Trafficking Victims Prevention and Protection Reauthorization Act of 2021, ahead of its introduction into the House of Representatives. Hope for Justice provided recommendations and expert insight for the draft bill, which is aimed at preventing human trafficking in federal contract supply chains, particularly hotels, lodgings, and air transportation.
The Biden administration must respond to a multi-agency investigation into potential labour trafficking of unaccompanied migrant children released from government custody, according to lawmakers from both parties. Members of Congress expressed outrage after Bloomberg Law reported on Thursday that federal officials are probing whether the Department of Health and Human Services released teens to labour traffickers who forced them to work in poultry-processing facilities in Alabama, Oregon and other locations.
This blog story by Terre des Hommes explains how it worked with representatives from Kenya and Uganda, along with various organizations, to repatriate 35 Karamojong children who migrated from Karamoja, Uganda, to Nairobi, Kenya, where they were subjected to abuse. The children were identified by the Counter Human Trafficking Trust East Africa (CHTEA), a Kenyan CSO that was investigating the trafficking of vulnerable girls to Nairobi.
This opinion piece discusses whether, given the inaction of Australia and Indonesia, it is time to bypass the Bali Process on human trafficking entirely. Six years on from the Andaman Sea crisis that claimed the lives of hundreds of Rohingya refugees and Bangladeshi migrants seeking passage to Southeast Asia, the region seems no nearer to mitigating the risks facing the victims of human trafficking and smuggling, says the author.
Africa has made significant progress in its implementation of the Global Compact for Migration but more action is needed to sustain the momentum amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to reports presented at the Africa Regional Review of the implementation of the U.N.’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM). The continental report notes that while many African countries have laws, guidelines and mechanisms to tackle trafficking, the continent has the lowest crime conviction rate per 100,000 people compared to other regions.
Give2Asia’s Friends Fund platform assists Asia-Pacific nonprofits with the receipt of tax-deductible gifts from supporters in the United States. It handles donor support and back-office administration, including tax receipts, removing the need to establish a public charity in the U.S. or file overseas tax returns.
The Freedom Fund is seeking an experienced consultant to support its Research & Evaluation Team for three months on a number of fully funded research projects in Ethiopia and Brazil.
Share your news
Post your experiences from the field and initiatives to feature