Asylum seekers forced to 'Remain in Mexico' under Trump rule anxiously await election results

Under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico while their immigration claims are processed

Asylum seekers who have been forced to wait at a Mexican border camp for months while their immigration claims are processed in the US under a controversial Trump administration policy stayed up into the early hours of Wednesday night, watching anxiously as the results of the US election continued to roll in from polling stations across the country. 

“We are very much aware of this election and we ask our heavenly father to do his will,” Josue Hernandez, an asylum seeker from Honduras whose last name has been changed over fears that speaking out could affect his asylum case in the US,  told The Independent early on Wednesday morning. 

“Deep in our hearts, we are all with [Joe] Biden, but under these conditions, we cannot cheer publicly,” Hernandez said.

Instead, asylum seekers gathered together to watch the election  results come in, with video posted to social media by New York Times journalist Caitlin Dickerson showing a group of people at the encampment singing as they waited. 

Waiting in the hopes of change is a process Hernandez is all too familiar with, with the asylum seeker’s family, including his wife and three children, having been forced to live at an encampment along the Rio Grande in Matamoros, a Mexican border town opposite Brownsville, Texas, with a level four “do not travel” advisory from the US State Department due to high rates of crime and violence, for more than a year now.

Like more than 60,000 other asylum seekers, they have been forced to stay in Mexico while their asylum claims are processed in the U.S. under the Trump administration’s widely contested Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy. 

Across the camp in Matamoros, Hernandez said asylum seekers have been praying that Biden wins the election, with the Democratic presidential nominee vowing to see the MPP policy rescinded within his first 100 days in office. 

If Biden loses his bid to unseat President Donald Trump in the tight election race, however, the future appears bleak for the thousands of asylum seekers forced to “Remain in Mexico".

A family of Mexican asylum seekers walks to the center of the international bridge between Mexico and the United States to officially request political asylum from U.S. immigration officials on December 08, 2019 in the Mexican border town of Matamoros, Mexico. Under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico while their immigration claims are processed in the U.S. ( John Moore/Getty)

If re-elected, Trump is expected to continue to enforce the MPP program indefinitely, despite repeated warnings from human rights and immigration advocacy groups that the “Remain in Mexico” policy poses a direct threat to the health and safety of an already vulnerable population. 

Already, in the less than two years since the policy was first implemented in late January of 2019, human rights organisations Human Rights First and Human Rights Watch have documented hundreds of public reports of kidnapping, sexual assault, torture and other violence against asylum seekers and migrants forced to wait in Mexico under the MPP program. 

Despite fears for asylum seekers’ health and safety, which have only grown in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, however, Trump administration officials repeatedly championed Trump over his leadership on enforcing the “Remain in Mexico” policy in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election, with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli asserting during a press conference on Monday that the program has so far “proven very fruitful”. 

While asylum seekers are hopeful for a Biden victory, Hernandez said they have no choice but to accept whatever outcome American voters deliver. 

“We are waiting for the end of the election, but … we will be calm until the end,” Hernandez said. 

“If Biden wins, let him fulfill everything he has promised,” he said. “If Trump wins, we ask God to trust his heart and his thoughts and that he helps us so that it is not in vain, all that we have suffered here while waiting in inhumane conditions.”