United States-Mexico, expelling Venezuelans threatens people’s rights and lives: “Restoring access to asylum at the border”

WASHINGTON – The decision of US President Joe Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to expand the expulsion policy and thus expel Venezuelans to Mexico, without allowing them to seek asylum in the States, endangers human lives and violates international law United. It can be read in a document released by Human Rights Watch (Hwr). The parallel announcement of a new program to allow some Venezuelans to apply to travel to the United States by air includes restrictions that will leave many asylum seekers unable to obtain protection.

Irregular Venezuelan migrants in the US expelled to Mexico. On October 12, the governments of the United States and Mexico announced a new migration enforcement process for Venezuelans “to reduce the number of people arriving” at the US border. According to the policy, which went into effect on October 13, all Venezuelans who cross the border between the United States and Mexico irregularly will be deported to Mexico without the possibility of seeking asylum in the United States. As of October 18, 4,050 Venezuelans had been repatriated. “A new legal path for some Venezuelans seeking security in the United States – said Tyler Mattiace, a Mexican researcher at HRW – will not cover the probable damage that many others will suffer from this massive expansion of the policy of (abusive) expulsion of the borders of the United States. Title 42 of the Trump era. With this decision – added Mattiace – Biden is punishing those Venezuelans who have been forced to flee their country on foot, denying them the right to seek asylum and trying to sweeten this policy with a program of freedom. humanitarian surveillance, which will benefit only a select few “.

In Mexico but without documents to use the services. Before October 13, neither the United States nor Mexico had expelled most Venezuelans because the Caracas government often refuses to accept flights with expelled people. Venezuelans expelled to Mexico in recent days have been granted visas valid for a few days or received documents from Mexican authorities, instructing them to leave the country via the Mexican-Guatemalan border. The documents do not allow them to stay in Mexico or obtain public services such as health care or education. Human Rights Watch he asked the representatives of the National Institute for Migration and the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Mexico about the legal status of the expelled Venezuelans, but had received no reply as of 21 October.

Asylum is prevented. Since March 2020, Title 42 has prevented hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Africans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans and people of many other nationalities from accessing fair asylum procedures in the United States, in violation of US and international law. The governments of the United States and Mexico have also announced a new program, which began on October 18, to allow up to 24,000 Venezuelans who meet certain requirements to apply for permission to travel to the United States by air. To qualify, Venezuelans must be in possession of a valid passport and have a US-based sponsor who agrees to provide accommodation and financial support. Venezuelans who illegally entered the United States, Mexico or Panama after October 18 are not eligible.

These requirements are often difficult to meet. Many Venezuelans face administrative and economic hurdles in obtaining or renewing passports or other official documents – including marriage and birth certificates – as Venezuelan consular services are scarce and inaccessible. Requiring asylum seekers to produce a government passport that could persecute them fundamentally contradicts the reality for many refugees, Human Rights Watch said. The Biden administration is expected to restore access to the right to seek asylum for all who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border, regardless of nationality, financial means, family ties or travel documents in their possession. And the US should remove the passport requirement that will leave many Venezuelans unable to apply for the new program.

For Biden, Venezuelans are like Ukrainians, but not quite. Biden administration officials have compared the program for Venezuelans to Uniting for Ukraine, created in April, which allows Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion to apply to travel to the United States. However, the US did not prohibit Ukrainians from seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border and, in March, exempted Ukrainians from being deported to Mexico under the Title 42 policy. The number of Venezuelans traveling to the US border has increased in recent years as the country faces a brutal crackdown on dissent and a humanitarian emergency with millions of people unable to access basic health care, adequate food and safe water. Over 7 million people have fled Venezuela since 2014. US officials arrested more than 200,000 Venezuelans on the US-Mexico border between January 2021 and August 2022.

Migrants forced into dangerous routes. US officials have leaned heavily on Mexico, Guatemala and other regional governments to prevent migrants and asylum seekers of other nationalities from traveling north to reach the US border, which has prompted many to take more dangerous routes. After Mexico, Costa Rica and Belize imposed new visa requirements for Venezuelans, making it more difficult for them to travel north by plane, the number crossing the dangerous Darien Gap on the Colombian-Panama border has skyrocketed. More than 107,000 Venezuelans crossed the Darien Gap between January and September 2022, compared to about 1,500 in the same period in 2021. In May, Human Rights Watch traveled to Darien Gap and documented serious abuses by criminals against migrants. who rarely have access to health care, protection or justice.

The discretion of US immigration agents. The Title 42 border expulsion policy has effectively closed US ports of entry to nearly all asylum seekers since it was implemented by former US President Donald Trump in March 2020, under the pretext of being a measure response to the pandemic. Public health officials have since claimed that the approach was “the abuse of a public health authority” and that it was politically motivated. The policy allows U.S. immigration officers to refuse to accept asylum applications at official border crossings and deport anyone crossing the border irregularly without allowing them to seek asylum in the United States. It has been used more than 2.2 million times to deport migrants and asylum seekers to Mexico or their countries of origin.

Biden expelled more than Trump: but he promised otherwise. The Biden administration had announced plans to end the deportation policy in April after using it for more than a year to deport people more than twice as often as the Trump administration, but several US states have contested the move. federal court, resulting in an order to keep the policy in effect during the litigation. Since then, the Biden administration has expanded the use of Title 42 and officials have reported that they intend to find other ways to deport asylum seekers if they are no longer able to abuse the public health authority to do so.

The role of criminal groups. Criminal groups and Mexican officials often target migrants and asylum seekers deported from the United States to Mexico for abuses including kidnapping, extortion and rape, Human Rights Watch and other groups have documented. There have been at least 6,000 documented cases of kidnappings or other violent attacks against people brought back to Mexico from the United States, according to the Human Rights First organization, which tracks such cases. The Mexican government should refuse to accept any deportations, including those of Venezuelans, and especially those at greatest risk, such as LGBT people and people with chronic diseases or disabilities, Human Rights Watch said. It should also provide legal status for all Venezuelans expelled from the United States to ensure they can access basic services.

The fundamentals of international law have been disregarded. The right to seek asylum is a fundamental principle of international human rights law and is implemented in US domestic law. Every applicant for international protection has the right to seek asylum abroad and to be examined before the competent authorities. Expelling asylum seekers without allowing them to submit their applications violates the Refugee Convention, the Convention against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. “Biden and López Obrador should work together to create humane, equitable and rights-abiding immigration and asylum systems rather than restricting the right to seek asylum based on race, nationality, financial means or family ties,” said Ari Sawyer, researcher. US border at Human Rights Watch.