Migrants forced to wait in Mexico are confronted with another threat to their health and safety as the virus spreads

Stuart isn’t leaving his house in Tijuana right now unless it’s absolutely necessary.

Like countless others across the world, the Guatemalan asylum seeker is wary of contracting the coronavirus. But he’s also worried about going outside after Mexican municipal police detained him illegally, then tortured and robbed him earlier this month, according to him and his attorney.

“I don’t want to be here, and I’m afraid to be here,” said Stuart, who asked to protect his identity by using a nickname.

Migrants in Mexico are staring down yet another existential threat to their health and safety in the shape of the coronavirus outbreak. Meanwhile, they’re stuck in cities where they can’t trust the authorities, and where their attorneys say they have, at best, limited access to healthcare.

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Stuart is among the migrants who have been forced to wait in Mexico for months or even a year because of the Trump administration’s crackdown at the border. One policy, called “metering”, makes migrants join a line in Mexico for their chance to access the asylum process in the United States.

Another, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), strands people at the southern border before and between their US immigration court hearings.

Through these changes to immigration norms, the Trump administration is sending migrants to a place that ranks first on “most dangerous cities in the world” lists, or a state under a “do not travel” advisory, instead of allowing them to at least temporarily come into the US.

In late-February, Human Rights First compiled more than a thousand publicly reported rapes, murders, kidnappings and other violent crimes against migrants returned to Mexico to await their court dates. Like in Stuart’s case, police were often the perpetrators.

“There are a lot of people who are sick in MPP, a lot of people who have kids or parents that have medical vulnerabilities already because they’ve been in Mexico, and homeless, and living in tent camps or crowded shelters for a really long time,” said Christina Brown, a Denver-based immigration attorney.

Yet even as the coronavirus spread across the US, migrants still amassed in large groups, were transported next to one another in vans and filed into US immigration courts, their attorneys said.

When Brown started experiencing the virus’s symptoms last week and tried to postpone her client’s court date so she wouldn’t potentially infect government workers and vulnerable migrants, it took multiple calls and an email from her or her paralegal just to get permission to file an emergency continuance over the web, instead of in-person.

A judge eventually granted her motion, but Brown balked at the fact that it was a matter of discretion.

In California, Robyn Barnard, a staff attorney with Human Rights First, asked her clients who came through the San Ysidro port of entry for their asylum hearing whether they were given additional screenings for health conditions or coronavirus symptoms. They told her they were asked by US officials for their names and if the women were pregnant or on their periods, but nothing more. The family packed into a court waiting room, where there weren’t even enough chairs for everyone to sit.

As immigration judges, government attorneys and immigration attorneys collectively sounded the alarm that continued operations at immigration courts could threaten public health, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR), which adjudicates immigration cases, slowly reacted.

But even after EOIR closed some courts and postponed hearings for immigrants not in government custody, the MPP hearings continued. Meanwhile, Kim Hunter, a border rights fellow for Project Corazon who until recently worked in Matamoros, saw only a handful of people wearing masks.

Not until Friday did MPP hearings cancel for the day, and confusion abounded as to when and how they would be rescheduled. Migrants who showed up at ports of entry were turned away, attorneys said; some were told to return the following day so they could be assigned a court date. The change in policy coincided with the Trump administration’s announcement that it was closing the US-Mexico border to all non-essential travel.

Hunter listed off clients who are currently in Mexico and fit the profiles of coronavirus’s most at-risk victims – a girl with a life expectancy of 10, whose particular syndrome kills those affected when they breathe; a client with cardiomyopathy; a nearly 70-year-old living in a tent in one of the camps.

But it’s going to be difficult to get any of them into the US now, said Charlene D’Cruz, one of Hunter’s colleagues at Project Corazon. To even try, she thought she would have to somehow go to Mexico and risk the spread of disease. Even then, the likelihood her clients would actually be removed from MPP and allowed into the US was still low, in her view.

Erika Pinheiro, litigation director at Al Otro Lado, warned she fears that mass deaths will follow once the virus reaches the crowded spaces where migrants in Mexico find refuge. Already, attorneys said they constantly hear everyone staying in shelters and camps walking around with a cough, a testament to how quickly respiratory issues spread in such close quarters.

“Once it hits the camp, it will spread like wildfire,” Hunter said. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”