People pray at a makeshift memorial for victims of a shooting in El Paso, Texas, on August 5, 2019, ... [+]
The year 2019 produced many significant and, in some cases, tragic stories about immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The list is not comprehensive but focuses on those stories considered most important to remember.
Shooting of Mexican Immigrants in El Paso: On August 3, 2019, a (white) gunman at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, attempted to shoot as many Latinos as possible before later surrendering to police. He killed 22 people and injured many more. He told police he targeted Mexican immigrants and had produced a manifesto that declared “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”
Journalists reported examples of Donald Trump using language similar to the shooter: “At campaign rallies before last year’s midterm elections, President Trump repeatedly warned that America was under attack by immigrants heading for the border. ‘You look at what is marching up, that is an invasion!’ he declared at one rally. ‘That is an invasion!’” according to the New York Times. The shooter claimed his views “predate Trump.”
The killings spread fear among immigrants. “A Dreamer in Texas told me he was terrified of taking his son to stores or crowded places, and said he warned his parents not to speak Spanish in public,” reported Adrian Carrasquillo in Politico. “A white man said his Latina wife from the Rio Grande Valley broke down after reading the shooter’s manifesto. She told him she’s sorry if their future kids are targets because of her.”
Abdifatah Ibrahim, center, and his brother Abdi, right, are the older brothers of three-year-old ... [+]
Shooter in New Zealand Targets Immigrants and Muslims: On March 15, 2019, an Australian man killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. As in El Paso, the shooter in Christchurch produced an anti-immigrant manifesto. “Clearly, what has happened here is an extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence,” said New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. “Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand, they may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home. They are us.”
Deaths in Detention and at the Border: The past year saw many deaths of migrants, including children, while in detention or attempting to cross the border.
On May 19, 2019, Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez, a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala, died in a Border Patrol holding cell. A disturbing video of Carlos was released in December 2019. “ProPublica has obtained video that documents the 16-year-old’s last hours, and it shows that Border Patrol agents and health care workers at the Weslaco holding facility missed increasingly obvious signs that his condition was perilous,” reported ProPublica. “The cellblock video shows Carlos writhing for at least 25 minutes on the floor and a concrete bench. It shows him staggering to the toilet and collapsing on the floor, where he remained in the same position for the next four and a half hours.”
In June 2019, NBC News reported, “Twenty-four immigrants have died in ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] custody during the Trump administration, according to an NBC News analysis of federal data. At least four others, including Medina Leon, died shortly after being released from ICE custody.”
U.S. authorities generally prevented people from applying for asylum when approaching lawful ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico Border. One apparent result of the policy is more people drowned or required a water rescue. “In fiscal year 2018, the Del Rio sector reported six water-related deaths; the following year, there were 18,” according to CNN in an October 2019 article. “And agents in Del Rio handled the majority of water rescues in sectors along the Rio Grande in 2019, pulling 351 people from bodies of water in the sector – a big jump from 31 people the previous year.”
On September 29, 2019, the New York Times reported, “Last week, a 26-year-old mother and her toddler drowned crossing the river, at least the second parent and child since June to die doing so.” In June 2019, CNN wrote, “The image of the Salvadoran father and his daughter lying face down in the water of the Rio Grande, part of the U.S. border with Mexico, is a heartbreaking testimony to the suffering behind the numbers.”
Conditions For Asylum Seekers Who Must Remain in Mexico: “In the middle of the largest refugee camp on the U.S. border – close enough to Texas that migrants can see an American flag hovering across the Rio Grande – Marili’s children had fallen ill,” wrote Kevin Sieff of the Washington Post in November 2019. “In recent weeks, dozens of parents have watched as their children, sleeping outside in the cold, have become sick or despondent. Many decided to get them help the only way they knew how – sending them across the border alone. . . . These cases illustrate the human toll of the Trump administration’s policy and suggest the United States, Mexico and the United Nations were unprepared to handle many of the unforeseen consequences.”
A migrant camp near the U.S. border in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, in Mexico on November 1, 2019.
Sieff also told the story of Victor and Maria Esquivel who, along with their two boys, were kidnapped the fourth day following being returned to Mexico after applying for asylum in the United States.
“There are now at least 636 public reports of rape, kidnapping, torture, and other violent attacks against asylum seekers and migrants returned to Mexico under MPP [Migrant Protection Protocols] – a sharp increase from October,” according to a December 2019 report by Human Rights First. These are only the cases that were reported.
“We can’t guarantee their security there,” said Salvador Rosas, a member of Mexico’s Congress representing Tamaulipas. “There are going to be more kidnappings. There are going to be migrants killed.”
“DHS has forced more than 60,000 asylum seekers and other migrants to wait in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols,” writes Human Rights First in its report. “In addition, some 21,000 are stranded in Mexico due to metering – the illegal policy of turning back asylum applicants at ports of entry. In November, the administration also began to take steps toward implementing asylum-seeker transfer agreements with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.”
On May 7, 2019, a federal appeals court ruled in Innovation Law Lab v. McAleenan the Trump administration could continue to require asylum seekers to be returned to Mexico as it prepared an appeal to an April 8, 2019, ruling that granted an injunction on the policy.
Number of Refugees Further Reduced, Long-Term Outlook Grows More Bleak: “Last month, for the first time since records began, the number of refugees resettled in the U.S. hit zero,” according to Natasha Frost of Quartz. “The nosedive is the result of a State Department freeze on admissions.” Under administration refugee policies, the United States is accepting few Iraqi interpreters who risked their lives helping U.S. troops.
Beyond lower annual refugee admissions, human rights advocates have identified a broader problem. “The Trump administration’s decision to reduce this year’s refugee cap to a record-low 18,000 people is just one step in its broader plan to shrink the program and make it harder for any future administration to quickly resume accepting refugees,” reported Michelle Hackman of the Wall Street Journal. “The government has increased vetting of most refugees, slowing the arrival of people who were previously approved. It also said last month that it would stop accepting most new referrals from the United Nations agency that coordinates world-wide refugee resettlement, meaning almost no new applicants will enter the yearslong process required for resettlement in the U.S.”
A September 26, 2019, executive order would give a veto over resettling refugees to state and local officials. Donald Trump was criticized for telling members of a primarily white crowd in Minnesota they could use the new order to keep out African refugees.
Weakened U.S. Position in Attracting Talent and Students: “New enrollment of international students at U.S. universities declined by more than 10% between the 2015-16 and 2018-2019 academic years, according to a new report,” as discussed in this Forbes article. A National Foundation for American Policy analysis found, “As a result of more restrictive Trump administration policies, denial rates for H-1B petitions have increased significantly, rising from 6% in FY 2015 to 24% through the third quarter of FY 2019 for new H-1B petitions for initial employment.”
An August 2019 CNBC report from Bryan Borzykowski was headlined: “Nixing Silicon Valley, U.S. companies are now tapping Canada for tech talent.” The Wall Street Journal reported, “By hiring in Toronto, companies can get around the Trump administration’s tough immigration rules that have made it more difficult to hire foreign workers in the U.S.”
Making it More Difficult to Become a U.S. Citizen: Economists know when the price of a good or service rises, the demand generally goes down. Critics say that is the idea behind a dramatic increase in immigration fees, including a more than 50% increase for immigrants who want to become American citizens. “Fees for citizenship petitions would also increase from $750 to $1,170, and the amount could be higher for some immigrants,” according to CBS News. Doug Rand of Boundless said, “It’s an unprecedented weaponization of government fees.”
Using Executive and Regulatory Actions to Overturn Immigration Law: An estimated hundreds of thousands fewer people each year would become immigrants if the administration’s regulation on “public charge” (published October 4, 2019) or the presidential proclamation (issued October 4, 2019) using Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar new immigrants from entering the United States without health insurance went into effect. Both are currently blocked by the courts. If the use of 212(f) authority is allowed in this instance, it would allow a president to “greatly restrict legal immigration to the United States, even in congressionally authorized categories,” according to William Stock of Klasko Immigration Law Partners.
Jewish refugees from Germany aboard the passenger ship St. Louis were denied entry to the United ... [+]
Connecting Past Immigration Restrictions to the Present: In an op-ed in the New York Times, Daniel Okrent, author of The Guarded Gate, wrote of the 1924 immigration law: “The biologists and their publicists achieved what their political allies had failed to accomplish for 30 years: enactment of a law stemming the influx of Jews, Italians, Greeks and other eastern and southern Europeans.”
Okrent pointed out the Washington Post “editorialized that 90% of Italians coming to the United States were ‘the degenerate spawn’ of ‘Asiatic hordes,’” while leading anti-immigrant funder Joseph Lee argued the new law was needed to keep out Jews. Okrent writes, “[T]he savagery of the Holocaust began” while Jews were largely blocked from entering America due to the 1924 immigration law.
New research finds blocking immigrants in the 1920s did not increase the wages of U.S. workers, as supporters of immigration restrictions predicted. “The earnings of existing U.S.-born workers declined after the border closure, despite the loss of immigrant labor supply,” according to economists Ran Abramitzky, Philipp Ager, Leah Platt Boustan and others. They found other people moved into “affected urban areas” and the lower supply of workers encouraged farmers to increase the use of machinery.
Let us hope the year 2020 will bring less tragedy and more good news on immigration.
Note: The headline and opening and concluding paragraphs have been updated.
