Pandemic as Pretext: Trump Administration Exploits COVID-19, Expels Asylum Seekers and Children to Escalating Danger

◼ CBP officers at the El Paso port of entry repeatedly refused to provide notices to parents who appeared alone at the port of entry to pick up documents on behalf of their families to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19 and ordered the parents to return with their children and/or partner. [...] No Public Health Rationale to Close Border to Asylum Seekers The administration’s claims that the CDC order authorizing the closure of the border to and expulsion of asylum seekers is intended to prevent the introduction of COVID-19 to the United States are a pretext for advancing its long-held goal of eliminating legal protections for asylum seekers and unaccompanied children at the border. [...] San Diego, found no relationship between the number of asylum seekers who apply for protection at the southern border or who are permitted to enter the United States at the southern border to continue their asylum proceedings and the prevalence of infectious diseases, like the flu, in the United States. [...] At the same time that the administration is blocking refugees from seeking asylum protection in the United States, supposedly on the ground that processing asylum seekers in DHS border facilities would risk contagion, CBP and Border Patrol are failing to use basic public health measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 to the public. [...] The voluntariness of these transfers is highly questionable, given the serious dangers and terrible conditions for asylum seekers returned to the tent encampment in Matamoros and the fact that some of the individuals sent to Tijuana have already left in an attempt to return to Matamoros on their own.