MPP and COVID-19: US policy is making infection inescapable for refugees
By Abdiel Razo, Communications Associate
Back in October, NMILC joined the Estamos Unidos Asylum Project organized by CLINIC and travelled to El Paso/Juarez for two days to volunteer to provide legal aid to migrants required to remain in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Under MPP, migrants, largely from Central America, parts of Mexico, and Cuba, are required to risk their lives in camps which are unable to implement hygiene protocols in Mexican border cities. In late March, as the pandemic was reaching its height, the US announced new travel restrictions allowing border agents to deny entry to people including asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors in order to “prevent further spread of the coronavirus into the United States” according to the White House. Adding the constant rescheduling of MPP hearings through June 1st, migrants are effectively stranded in camps across the border.
Many of these camps and shelters are makeshift and crowded, which makes the transmission of COVID-19 among those living there more likely. Human Rights Watch in April found these camps and shelters along the border overcrowded and with overflowing portable bathrooms. In Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, there are 2,500 asylum seekers packed into an area the size of two football fields. There is no luxury of social distancing.
In response, public health entities and NGO’s like Global Response Management (GRM) have put in measures to make sure to prevent a potential outbreak. Nevertheless, outbreaks have now occurred in several camps along the border. The Leona Vicario migrant shelter in Juarez reported 12 infections, another shelter in Nuevo Laredo has 15, and there is one case in Reynosa. GRM Executive Director Helen Perry says that despite their best efforts “social distancing and quarantine in refugee situations is nearly impossible,” adding that “bathrooms are communal, kitchens are communal, sinks are communal. So it's incredibly difficult.” Adding to this is the concern about the adequacy of testing by the Mexican government, with experts saying that counts and death toll numbers have been underreported – maybe purposefully. Due to this lack of infrastructure and the uncertainty of who has been exposed, refugee camps across the border are ticking time bombs that could have deadly consequences for countless individuals who have already been abandoned by the US immigration system.
The Trump administration had no problem leaving these asylum seekers at the mercy of criminal elements at the border months ago, it certainly has no problem leaving them exposed to possible infection while they wait in limbo. This shut down not only further endangers asylum seekers, it violates US and international rights obligations as well. Asylum seekers should not be waiting in a deadly limbo nor should they be detained in equally dangerous immigration prisons but paroled into the United States with quarantine or other measures as necessary for public health. A recent study found that 91.9 percent of asylum seekers have family or close friends in the United States, and therefore can find adequate shelter.
