Asylum-seekers pushed to new extremes in Mexico with President Trump’s Policies

The array of the new Trump administration’s policies have come in a blur.  Each policy has human impacts.  For example, the elimination of CBP One has had devastating impacts on families who relied on appointments secured through the application only to have them summarily cancelled and their hopes dashed.

 Megan Janetsky & Edgar H. Clemente for the Associated Press offer some accounts of the costs:  “When Dayana Castro heard that the U.S. asylum appointment she waited over a year for was canceled in an instant, she had no doubt: She was heading north any way she could. The 25-year-old migrant, her husband and their 4- and 7-year-old children had nothing left at home in Venezuela. They already had trekked the perilous Darien Gap jungle dividing Colombia and Panama and criminal groups that prey on migrants like them. Castro was one of tens of thousands of migrants across Mexico with appointments to apply for U.S. asylum at the border . . . until President Donald Trump . . . ended the use of the CBP One app . . . .  Many [migrants] remain determined to reach the U.S. through more dangerous means, riding freight trains, hiring smugglers and dodging authorities.”

KJ