At least 11 migrant women have been dropped off without birth certificates in Mexican border towns since March last year for their one-day-old newborn babies, according to a study by the Fuller Project and the Guardian.
Based on multiple interviews with attorneys working with asylum seekers at the border and a review of hospital records and legal documents, multiple newborns of U.S. citizens were transferred to Mexico after their mothers were subject to a Trump-era border ban imposed by the government of Mexico. Biden-Harris was imposed. is slow with retraction.
Lawyers suspect that the true number of such cases could be higher because the vast majority of these rapid “evictions,” as the administration calls them, have taken place out of the public eye and without the intervention of lawyers.
This recent pattern of expulsion of US citizens without birth certificates has occurred against the backdrop of immigration policies and practices of recent years that have already harmed vulnerable women and children, lawyers and attorneys say.
Former President Donald Trump’s zero-tolerance policies, which led to more than 5,000 children being separated from their parents, and the increase in long-term detention of children, were the most visible policy measures, but only the tip of the iceberg. Domestic security agencies also detained 4,600 pregnant women between 2016 and 2018, with an increase of 52% between those two years. Several detained women have also complained of miscarriages and intrusive medical procedures.
Hélène *, a 23-year-old woman from Haiti, was nine months pregnant when she entered the United States in July 2020. She was in custody with the US Border Patrol when her waters broke. Agency officials took her to a local hospital in Chula Vista, California, to give birth. She was happy when her daughter was born – everything went smoothly, she told the Fuller Project and the Guardian in a telephone conversation through a translator.
They were fired three days later. Hélène remembers thinking she would be released to family and continue her asylum case, she said. But about 25 minutes later she was back in Mexico, at the border where she arrived a few days ago, pregnant in the middle of summer, after a journey that lasted a month and three days. She began to cry in a panic. She pleaded in Spanish to the customs and border security officials (CBP) who drove her across the border. She knew they understood, she says. The officers did not respond.
They dropped her off opposite the San Diego-Tijuana border, on the side of the road. She had no idea what to do or where to go. She also did not have a birth certificate for her newborn. When night fell, she and her baby slept there on the street, on the other side of safety.
Hélène fell under Title 42, an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued during the start of the government’s federal actions against the Covid-19 pandemic last March. The rule allowed CBP officials to immediately “deport” all migrants entering the US without authorization, rather than allowing them access to the legal avenue of seeking protection, even those seeking asylum.
Rapid deportations have happened at the border before, but immigrants typically have the right to be screened for asylum applications and see an immigration judge if they are likely to be harmed after removal. Title 42 allows authorities to dismiss people with immediate effect. However, officials can exempt people on a case-by-case basis and grant admission in case of humanitarian or public interests.
“Immigration [agencies have] the authority to prevent that, but they refuse to do so, ”said Luis M Gonzalez, a lawyer with Jewish Family Services who has represented two cases in which migrant mothers and their newborns were deported from the US. “They post [the] lives of American citizens in danger. In this case, newborns. “
In fiscal year 2020, the Dutch DPA reported that more than 200,000 deportations – including unaccompanied children – were reversed under title 42. In the first three months of fiscal year 2021 alone, more than 190,000 deportations have been made so far. The Trump administration called Title 42 “hugely effective.”
On February 2, Joe Biden issued an executive order directing his officials to “immediately review” Title 42 and other border policies. But proponents have frustrated that more decisive, faster action has not been taken. On Jan. 29, a panel of three judges made up of conservative judges appointed by Trump overturned a lower court decision to prevent the rule from applying to unaccompanied minors.
In a statement on Tuesday, Omar Jadwat, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, called it “ disturbing ” that Biden’s orders contained “ no immediate action to overcome the illegal and inhumane policies inherited by this government. pull and settle – and now own ”.
A spokesperson for the CBP, who asked that the information it provided be attributed to the agency, said the agency does not track how many women with newborns of U.S. citizens fell under Title 42 and declined to answer other questions about such cases. “By policy, the Dutch DPA does not comment on individual cases for privacy reasons,” the spokesperson, who asked not to be named, said via email.
They added, “Hospitals are responsible for providing birth certificates, and CBP does not prevent individuals, regardless of immigration status, from obtaining birth certificates for children of US citizens.”
CBP also told a local reporter last year that at least one new mother from Honduras was given the option to donate her baby to U.S. daycare before returning to Mexico.
“That’s not really a choice,” said Mitra Ebadolahi of the American Civil Liberties Union of San Diego, who, along with Gonzalez of Jewish Family Services, filed a complaint with the Inspector General’s Department of Homeland Security Office last summer asking for an investigation into the case of this Honduran mother.
The Honduran woman, her husband and their nine-year-old, had reported to border guards last June when the woman was nine months pregnant. The family had already been sent back to Mexico in March before Title 42 came into effect. According to the July 10 complaint, they were threatened by gunmen while in Mexico and “suffered from significant personal and material insecurity.”
The woman, who was in acute pain as a result of her late pregnancy, was taken to hospital in Chula Vista, California, while her partner and son were deported to Tijuana, Mexico, a city the ministry itself says is a hot spot for targets. murders and turf wars. Two days later, the woman and her baby were also sent to Tijuana.
In another case, Gonzalez, a migrant woman who had undergone a Caesarean section, represented an invasive procedure that takes weeks to heal, yet was transferred to Mexico within a week of her surgery, along with her newborn. Gonzalez later successfully petitioned the authorities to allow both families in on humanitarian grounds.
“I know it’s a cliché, but there is a very Kafka-like quality to these processes that really wipes out the humanity of the migrants’ experiences,” Ebadolahi said. “I have trouble coming up with language that adequately reflects the damage and the damage done.”
Natalia *, 24, wakes up in her apartment in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, across the border from McAllen, Texas, where she gave birth to her baby daughter last April. She takes care of the baby and her four-year-old son all day long. If she can come to America in the future, she wants to get her toddler’s birth certificate first, which she didn’t have in early January when she last spoke to The Guardian.
Problems can arise for mothers in her position: they may find it difficult to get their children vaccinated and register for early education, and they have problems obtaining food aid and other government benefits, said Nicole Ramos, director of Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project, a legal services organization for migrants.
“In all respects, that child is stateless, which will create a whole host of barriers … because they cannot establish citizenship,” said Ramos, who says her organization has handled nine such cases, including those of Hélène and Natalia. .
For the past two years, camps have mushroomed along the U.S.-Mexico border to house families in limbo as a result of Trump’s border policies struggling with access to basic services such as food, clean water and medical assistance.
Human Rights First, an advocacy group, has documented more than 1,300 cases of violent assaults, kidnappings, rape and murders of migrants included in the Migrant Protection Protocols – forcing migrants in Mexico to wait for their US hearings. the pandemic.
During this time, border shelters in Mexico are more tense and hospitals more crowded. Desperate, many migrants tried to re-enter the United States but were returned under Title 42.
All of these policies bring people who have already suffered significant trauma from repeated cycles of harm, proponents say.
“It has really become clear that the right to life protection of the children is about protecting white, Christian children… not about brown children of immigrant mothers,” Ramos says.
On Feb. 3, the Washington Post reported that Mexico had disclosed, not publicly, that they would stop accepting Central American families displaced by the US, but that they would continue to accept single adults.
In January, while Natalia’s little daughter cooed and bustled, she said she’d like Americans to know: Before her deportation to Reynosa, border officials told her that her daughter wouldn’t be able to get a birth certificate because she was born to parents who were. migrants without rights. Her daughter would also have no rights, they said.
* Names have been changed at the request of immigration lawyers as both women are fleeing persecution.
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This story is published in collaboration between the Guardian and the Fuller Project. Tanvi Misra is a contributing reporter the Fuller Project, a non-profit newsroom that reports on issues that affect women.