Migrants report overnight deportations, poor detention conditions, family separations

Migrants deported under a June executive order restricting access to asylum are reporting family separations and inhumane detention conditions, as well as night-time deportations, despite existing binational agreements limiting returns to daylight hours, advocates say.

Border agents have been routinely deporting migrants in the middle of the night to Nogales, Sonora, when humanitarian and government resources are unavailable, in violation of repatriation agreements between Mexican authorities and U.S. Border Patrol, attorneys and humanitarian workers on the border told the Arizona Daily Star.

“Not only does that violate local repatriation agreements, but it also presents a real human safety concern, and a disregard for human life,” said Chelsea Sachau, managing attorney for the Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Project’s Border Action Team.

Newly deported migrants are often easily identifiable in border towns, and are targeted for kidnapping, extortion or assault by criminal groups, she said.

Border agents also are still widely ignoring one of the protections laid out in President Joe Biden’s June 5 executive order, which requires agents to refer migrants to a credible-fear interview, at a higher standard than usual, if a migrant affirmatively expresses fear of return or requests asylum, the Star reported this month.

By ignoring asylum requests, the U.S. is returning asylum seekers to situations where they face persecution, torture or possible death, advocates said.

“I fail to understand why the most resourced government in the world cannot do better at providing a system for traumatized, vulnerable people who are seeking safety,” Sachau said. “They deserve dignity in the process and they deserve to be heard.”

Border Patrol is returning about 200 people a day to Nogales, Sonora, down from more than 400 in the first week of the executive order’s implementation, said Pedro De Velasco, director of education and advocacy for binational migrant-aid nonprofit Kino Border Initiative. Hundreds more are being returned daily to smaller border communities in Sonora.

“It’s not like anyone is advocating for everyone to be granted asylum,” De Velasco said. “We’re saying, if only one of those 200 cases has a valid asylum claim, has a valid fear of being returned to danger, persecution and possibly death, you should listen to the other 200. Otherwise, you’re risking that person dying because of your unwillingness to listen.”

CPB’s response

U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied the Star’s June 17 request to interview Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector Chief John Modlin about how agents are implementing the executive order and the reported failures to refer migrants manifesting fear to asylum officers.

A June 21 email from CBP did not directly address the Star’s questions about the reported violations. The email said CBP posts signs in the most common languages advising noncitizens in custody they should tell agents or officers if they have a fear of return, so they can be referred for a fear interview with an asylum officer.

“In addition, CBP immigration officers have been provided information on how to identify a manifestation of fear, which may include physical manifestations, not just verbal manifestations,” the email said.

In practice, agents are too often failing to identify, or intentionally ignoring, those fear manifestations, said Christina Asencio, the Tucson-based director of research and analysis for refugee protection with Human Rights First. She interviewed newly deported asylum seekers in Nogales, Sonora in the days following the executive order.

Some said they were mocked, laughed at or yelled at by agents and didn’t have an opportunity to speak. Those who managed to request asylum were dismissed, she said, describing a newly deported pregnant woman who said she directly asked a border agent how to request asylum.

“The officer indicated he didn’t speak good Spanish, and that was that,” she said. “It’s exactly what everyone has said would happen when you eliminated the requirement that Border Patrol officers ask in the person’s language (if they have fear of return) and document it.”

The CBP email denied returning vulnerable people to danger, despite the accounts from migrants and advocates.

“The U.S. is not stepping back from our legal obligations to provide protection to those present in the United States who are fleeing persecution or torture,” the email said. “But we must do it in an orderly way, and provide quicker decisions regarding whether an individual has a legal basis to remain in our country.”

Kino Border Initiative has also asked the Mexican Consulate General in Nogales, Arizona to press the Border Patrol to abide by existing repatriation agreements prohibiting overnight returns. But the consulate hasn’t responded to those pleas, De Velasco said.

A spokesperson for the Consulate General in Nogales, Arizona said they don’t have permission to comment on the executive order.

Executive order details

Biden’s June 5 executive order shuts down access to asylum for most migrants when Border Patrol’s average daily arrests between ports of entry exceed 2,500, until arrests fall below a daily average of 1,500.

It does not affect asylum request processing through official ports of entry, but asylum seekers are routinely turned away there if they don’t have one of the hard-to-access appointments through the Biden administration’s “CBP One” smartphone application.

Under the executive order, border agents no longer have to ask migrants if they fear return to their home country before returning them; now it’s up to asylum seekers to speak up and make that request, and they could get access to lesser forms of protection. Those who don’t speak up can be deported immediately.

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The American Civil Liberties Union and other human-rights groups are suing the Biden administration over the new policy, which the ACLU says is illegal.

Most of those returned so far under Biden’s executive order have been Mexican nationals returned to their country of origin, De Velasco said.

Sachau spent Thursday in Nogales, Sonora, providing free legal counsel to newly deported migrants sheltering at Kino Border Initiative, trying to explain complex immigration law to overwhelmed asylum seekers, she said.

“All of them are in a traumatized state trying to grapple with an incredibly complicated system,” she said.

Update to Congress

Migrant-shelter workers in Sonoyta, Sonora — one of the border towns receiving migrants deported under the new executive order — reported migrants being deported with heat stroke last week.

The San Juan Bosco shelter in Nogales, Sonora, is receiving more than 100 deported migrants daily, including dozens of children, said shelter director Juan Francisco Loureiro. Many are sick from extended detention in overly cold holding cells, described by migrants as hieleras, or “ice boxes,” which immigrant-rights groups have long criticized.

“A large quantity of those children we’re receiving arrive sick, because they’re treated by the U.S. authorities in an inhumane way,” Loureiro said in Spanish.

Deported asylum seekers said they were “totally blocked” from seeking asylum, he said.

“What’s very worrisome for us is these people can’t return to their place of origin, because they were forcibly displaced by the crime. And they can’t request humanitarian asylum in the U.S., so they’re in a state of desperation and uncertainty,” he said.

In a June 13 update to three U.S. Congressional committees, Kino Border Initiative described accounts from deported asylum seekers, including a Mexican woman whose 7-year-old son was almost kidnapped by an organized crime group in Michoacán, prompting them to flee. Border Patrol detained the family, and those they were traveling with, for five days before they were deported. The toilet was in the same room where they were being detained and they were not able to bathe, Kino’s report said.

The nonprofit filed a formal complaint with CBP’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties based on one of the accounts, in which injured migrants were returned to Mexico without paperwork, in an apparent attempt to cover-up a collision between a fast-moving Border Patrol vehicle and a cow, De Velasco said. In the report, Kino cites the story of a migrant identified as “Monica,” whose neck was injured in the crash.

“Although Monica complained of neck pain and all the passengers told BP that they had pain, not one of them received a medical examination. Instead, Monica overheard the agents consoling the driver, telling him not to worry and that he would not get in any trouble,” the report said. “BP deported Monica and her family quickly, and did not ask any of the victims of the crash to sign any paperwork, even though others deported in the same bus were all asked to sign something.”

Kino’s report said the nonprofit had documented 50 cases of family separations in the first two weeks of June, including an account from a migrant identified as “Ximena,” who had traveled to the border with three children, ages 13, 16 and 19. Border Patrol deported her without her eldest daughter, the report said.

“When KBI staff spoke with Ximena, she did not know the whereabouts of her daughter,” the report said.

CBP did not respond to the Star’s request for comment on the situations outlined in Kino Border Initiative’s report.

Sachau and migrant-shelter directors in Sonora told the Star they’ve heard some accounts of migrants held in custody for a week or more before they were deported.

“Why are they being held there for that length of time if now this expedited-removal process under new rule has been made more efficient for Border Patrol officers, at the cost of my clients ever having their voices heard?” Sachau said.

The detention conditions could violate a 2020 permanent injunction laying out conditions of confinement in Tucson Sector Border Patrol facilities, she said.

In their update to Congress, Kino Border Initiative pressed legislators to advocate for more CBP One appointments, the Biden administration’s recommended channel to access asylum. The number of daily CBP One appointments along the southern border has remained at 1,450 for a year, resulting in thousands waiting for up to eight months in dangerous conditions in Mexico, advocates say.

The nonprofit also requested an oversight hearing with U.S. Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens “to prevent further abuses and ensure that no person who expresses fear of return, persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum, is returned to danger and possible death without having had an interview with an asylum officer, as established in international and domestic law, and in the provisions of the” executive order.

International groups, including the United Nation’s Refugee Agency and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, or IACHR, pressed the U.S. to respect the right to seek asylum and abide by international treaties protecting against non-refoulement, the principle that refugees should not be returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom.

“The IACHR recalls the United States has an obligation to adequately identify migrants in need of protection,” a June 13 statement said. The group “urges that migration policies should not result in cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, family separations, dangers for children and adolescents or risks to life, liberty, or integrity of those in need of protection.”