Heather Cronk, a director of Showing Up for Racial Justice, one of several US advocacy groups that have been helping the caravan and its participants, traveled to Tijuana to support the migrants in the final stretch. In recent months, migrant advocates say, the Trump administration has kept many migrants seeking asylum in detention.
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“They have been well aware that a caravan is going to arrive at the border”, Nicole Ramos, a lawyer working on behalf of caravan members, told a news conference. Many involved with the March Without Borders have stated they’re ready to offer housing and support to the migrants. Some of the younger and more athletic had climbed the Border Fence and defiantly sat atop it. While asylum may not be granted, the government is legally obligated to consider the claim.
Gaby from Honduras is also waiting in the port to ask for asylum. All of the cases have been reviewed by lawyers.
“Many people think we left because we are criminals”. So the fate of the “asylum seekers” now hangs in the balance.
The US authorities were arguing that they didn’t have the room, didn’t have the resources to handle the asylum claims. Administration officials have blasted so-called “catch and release” policies that allow people seeking asylum to be released from custody into the USA while their claims make their way through the courts, a process that can last a year.
Under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1967 protocol, and adopted into US law, the USA must recognize refugees that fear persecution and are not able to get help from their home country.
Foreigners can seek asylum in two ways, affirmatively through the Department of Homeland Security and defensively, as part of fighting deportation proceedings in the U.S. Justice Department’s immigration courts. “What happens to those people who have made this journey for quite a few weeks now, and they get rejected, or worse yet, they don’t even get their asylum cases heard?” If they pass an asylum officer’s initial screening, they may be detained or released into the USA with ankle monitors.
Is this caravan something new? Pueblo Sin Fronteras, which translates to people without borders, a group representing the caravan, has said a high percentage of the people are Hondurans who are seeking refuge from “political repression, insecurity, and physical and economic violence”.
The caravan’s organizers hope to garner further sympathy for the migrants’ plight.
This year, the world’s spotlight was placed on the caravan when Trump began tweeting about it on early on Easter morning.
Already this April, Trump called on more manpower to be deployed by the National Guard in Arizona, New Mexico and California to secure the border.
While similar caravans have been planned in the past, rising tensions regarding President Trump has pushed this event into the spotlight.
She is among dozens of the Pueblo Sin Fronteras Caravan seeking asylum from the USA government – undeterred by fierce criticism from President Trump. “We need a change in the law”.
The increasing flow of desperate immigrants from Central America is the result of more than a century of imperialist oppression at the hands of the United States, which has devastated these societies.
For example, the study said, asylum seekers from Mexico were denied about 90 percent of the time during the study period.
Has the Trump administration changed the asylum process?
More than 50 asylum seekers were camped outside a gate on the Mexican side of the border crossing.
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Trump repeatedly came back to immigration issues at a rally in MI on Saturday night, saying at one point: “If we don’t get border security, we’ll close down the country”, apparently referring to a government shutdown when a funding deadline is reached in September.
