12/2/21

By Joshua Rubin

Mexico and the United Staes will announce this morning an agreement to revive the policy known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, more commonly called Remain in Mexico. At its heart, it is an agreement that turns certain cities on the northern border of Mexico into a purgatory for asylum seekers, in very dangerous places. Places made dangerous by a cottage industry of kidnap, assault, robbery and rape. That is what it was like before it was briefly suspended, and that is what it is likely to be again. 

Poignantly, there are many asylum seekers and refugees who welcome the reinstatement of the policy, because it appears to offer more hope of formal consideration of their applications for rescue than the current policy known as Title 42, which uses the excuse of the pandemic to turn people back across that same border without even allowing them to plead their case or make an application. And that policy will stand as well, creating a double-barreled weapon for the administration to carry out its mission to enforce the border we have made between haves and have-nots, which, as we have seen, especially applies to people of color.

The Biden administration has written a new memo to end MPP, one that states in unusually strong language that Remain in Mexico is dangerous and unworkable. Despite this admission, our country is joining with Mexico, under US court order, to add this to our arsenal of cruelty. Whether an asylum seeker coming to our gates is hit with Title 42 and expelled, across bridges or by plane, or allowed to fill out forms to appear in court after a harrowing stay in places that our State Department tells us are too dangerous to even visit, is a matter of discretion.

Both policies are part of a larger framework that is aimed at keeping the desperation caused by poverty, violence, and inequality out of sight and out of mind. Both use brutality to turn away the poor that come to our gates. Both deny humanity, theirs and ours.