Central American migrants, part of a group of 87 people deported from the US, wait in a van at the El Chaparral border crossing before being transported to a shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on July 22, 2019.

Officials at the Department of Homeland Security had initially sought to give asylum-seekers placed in a controversial Trump administration program that forced them to wait in Mexico the chance to receive a screening to avoid being returned to the country — but the question was cut from the policy before it was finalized, documents and emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News show.



The documents are the first public records to show some within the Department of Homeland Security had wanted to actively ask asylum-seekers whether they had fear of being returned to Mexico, evidence that immigration advocates say bolsters their arguments that the controversial program lacks necessary safeguards.



Under the Migration Protection Protocols policy, thousands of asylum-seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico as their cases are processed, a process that can take months or years to complete. The policy finalized by the administration removed the question and requires immigrants to affirmatively tell DHS officers that they fear for their safety in Mexico in order to have a chance at avoiding being returned to the country.

Immigrant advocates, the ACLU, and even asylum officers, have said the process is flawed because individuals don’t know that they can express the specific fear, are too intimidated to bring it up, and don’t find out that they are being forced back to Mexico until it’s too late.

Some attorneys have reported that border officials refuse to allow asylum-seekers to ask questions during the process. In a decision allowing for the Trump administration to continue the program as it went through appeals, one 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals judge said such questions needed to be asked.

“This shows that the agency made a deliberate, conscious decision to strike a provision in an earlier version of the MPP protocol which would have required [Customs and Border Protection] officers to question applicants about whether they have a fear of being returned or removed to any country,” said Judy Rabinovitz, lead counsel for the ACLU in the case challenging the policy. “Instead, the agency decided to strike this language and create a presumption of no fear, and no interview, unless the individual affirmatively brought up such a fear on their own.”

A US Citizenship and Immigration Services official told BuzzFeed News the finalized process was legal.

"Under MPP, we require an assertion of fear, which models processes in other contexts. This is similar to other programs and consistent with the law, a USCIS official said.