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Stories of Asylum Seekers
Asylum seekers are once again facing life-threatening situations now that the Trump administration has started sending them back to Mexico – before their asylum claims are even heard. The new policy requires that asylum seekers remain in Mexico while their asylum proceedings in the U.S. are pending – a process that typically takes at least a year. The ACLU is fighting this new policy with a class action lawsuit, please read and share the stories of their clients, asylum seekers who were sent back to Mexico.
“Asylum seekers often face unconscionable horrors in their country of origin as well as the countries to which they fled. Howard, for example, fled Honduras only to be kidnapped and held hostage by Los Zetas, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels. But despite the very clear credible fear he reported at the U.S. border, our government sent him back to Mexico – to wait for weeks, stranded, until his asylum hearing. ‘I had already said many times that I was afraid to go back to Mexico, and nobody seemed to care,’ he said.”
“Trump’s new policy forces asylum seekers – who fled life-threatening dangers in the first place – back into perilous situations with no clear way out. And many are sent back with little or no information on how to follow up with their cases. These are just some of the human consequences of the Trump administration’s reckless anti-immigrant policies. The asylum seekers we talked to come from different backgrounds and face various hardships – but they’re all in the same limbo right now, fearing for their lives and livelihoods.”
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