The US border fence separates Nogales, Mexico, right, from sister city Nogales, Arizona, left, Friday, Jan. 3, 2020. Dozens of asylum seekers pushed back into Mexico by the United States tried Friday to get their bearings still unsure of how they would travel some 350 miles to their court dates in El Paso, subsist for months in this unfamiliar border city or return to their distant homelands.
Lorenzo González, a Guatemalan farmworker travelling with his wife and three children between the ages of 1 and 12, said he didn’t see how they could wait three months. He was ready to throw in the towel, but also didn’t know how they’d be able to return to Guatemala. “I want to go back , but we don’t have money,” he said. He also didn’t have the 1,200 pesos for a bus ticket to Ciudad Juarez across the border from El Paso, where his court date was scheduled for March 25. “I don’t know what to do.”
A report by the independent Human Rights First group, released in December, documented at least 636 public reports of violence against asylum-seekers returned to Mexico including rape, kidnapping and torture. The group said that was a steep increase over October, when it had identified 343 attacks, and noted the latest figure is surely an under-count because most crime victims don’t report.
In a statement Thursday, acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the Migrant Protection Protocols program has been “an extremely effective tool.”