Roma Among Asylum Seekers at US/Mexico Border

Dans, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Reuters reports that there has been a significant uptick in the number of Romani asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Thus far in FY2021, Border Patrol has apprehended nearly ten times the number of these European migrants (2,217) than in all of FY2020 (266).

The Roma people have long faced discrimination in Europe. (See, e.g., this 2010 post regarding France’s exclusion of Romani.) And the United States has seen prior upticks on Romani asylum seekers. (See, e.g., this 2016 post regarding an influx to California in 2016.)

The most recent arrivals are another reminder that the Southern border is not just a gateway for migrants from Mexico and the Northern Triangle.

-KitJ