More confirmation that our immigration system is broken, and mired in politically loaded non-responses. It is the R’s version of Just Say No (to all immigrants.)
This is the harsh reality of asylum seekers who have recently reached our ports of entry and are turned back by U.S. officials, only to wait indefinitely for a chance at refuge in America that may never come. Notwithstanding the recent change in U.S. policy on family separation, the outlook for asylum seekers at the border remains bleak. Despite the Department of Homeland Security’s claim that it’s a “myth” that the U.S. is turning asylum seekers away at ports of entry, our team at the border has witnessed officials doing exactly that.
Consider Laura’s story.
By June 12, 29-year-old Laura and her 6-year-old son Nicolas had been sitting on the hot sidewalk of the Brownsville-Matamoros International Bridge for three days, just 20 feet away from a plaque that marked the international boundary line between Mexico and the United States. Sitting in the shade of a jury-rigged bit of canvas, Laura explained that she had left her native Honduras, intent on escaping her violent husband, a police officer who would beat her with impunity because pleas to her government were ignored. She had made her way through Mexico, heading to Matamoros where she had hoped to cross into the U.S. through a port of entry to apply for asylum.
Laura had heard that the United States had begun separating parents from their children, but she believed that coming through a port of entry would protect her and her son from that new form of government-sanctioned terror. Laura obviously had not heard that she could still have Nicolas taken from her at the port of entry, as has happened to a number of families over this past year.
Laura’s hopes and good intentions ran into a gauntlet formed by three U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers standing just on the U.S. side of that boundary marker. The officers were stopping and turning away anyone who had intended to request asylum from entering the United States.
“They keep telling me to go come back later, that there is no room for people like me (asylum seekers), and that I should try again in five or six hours,” Laura explained. “But I have been here for three days, along with these other people waiting here, and no one gets in.”
