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Members of a caravan of migrants from Honduras to the United States were arrested in Guatemala and deported before they could reach Mexico. Although their journey was shortened, the formation of a new caravan shows that as in 2018 and 2019 Central Americans are still fleeing violence, hunger and climate change en masse.

The crisis on the border between the USA and Mexico is also continuing. As a scholar of Mexican migration, I have witnessed how the pandemic has brought new hardships for immigrants, while at the same time leaving the Trump administration room for further restrictions on the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

The result is a continuation of the dehumanizing and dangerous conditions at the border, with less public control than ever before.

Crisis at the border

During my research for a 2019 documentary film, Waylaid in Tijuana, I observed first-hand the difficult conditions faced by thousands of migrants and asylum seekers who were stranded on the US-Mexico border long before the pandemic.

Under international and domestic law, the United States must offer asylum to people who have a well-founded fear of being persecuted because of their political beliefs, racial or ethnic background, religion, or other particular characteristics that make them targets of violence.

But in April 2018, the Trump administration began measuring asylum seekers by requiring them to be placed on a waiting list for their first appointment with U.S. officials. By August 2019, 25,000 people were on the list, most of them in Tijuana. In February 2020, just before the global pandemic was declared, 15,000 people were still waiting.

Nine months after the measurement began, the Trump administration introduced Migration Protection Protocols that require asylum-seekers who have passed their first hearing to return to Mexico to await any further court hearings. By March 2020, over 65,000 asylum-seekers had been returned to Mexico, mostly through ports of entry in Texas.

Under pressure from the Trump administration, the Mexican government endorsed this policy and gave asylum seekers the right to wait for their hearing in Mexico. Migrants in the caravans arriving in late 2018 and early 2019 also received special work permits.

Since then, however, the Mexican government has drastically reduced these permits, and todays migrants receive almost no government assistance. The lucky ones find room and board in a church-run migrant shelter, an informal job as a waiter or in construction, and access to health care and legal advice from local or U.S. nonprofit organizations.

Most migrants are not so lucky. Housing cannot keep up with demand, leaving thousands on the streets or in tent camps without sanitation or electricity, especially along the Texas border. Asylum-seekers outside the shelters rarely have access to social welfare or legal counsel.

Asylum seekers are also targeted by criminals and local police for extortion, robbery, kidnapping and assault adding another layer of trauma to the violence they suffer at home and on their journey. During the interviews with asylum seekers conducted for Waylaid in Tijuana, my colleagues and I were able to recognize the fear and anxiety in their body language.

Prevented by the pandemic

These two policies-the measurement system and migration protection protocols-had already significantly reduced the chances of Central American migrants receiving asylum in the United States before the pandemic. In August 2020, only 570 of the 44,000 asylum-seekers returned to Mexico whose cases had been decided were given refuge in the United States. This represents an approval rate of 1.3 percent, compared to 21 percent in 2018 for asylum seekers from El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

The pandemic has now enabled the Trump administration to effectively end asylum as a way for Central Americans to legally enter the United States.

In March 2020, the Department of Homeland Security closed the waiting lists for asylum hearings and suspended asylum hearings. The Trump administration also invoked Title 42, a little-used rule of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that aims to prevent the spread of infectious diseases, in order to immediately deport all migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border without the hearing to which many of them would normally be entitled.

Under this rule, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol

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Migrant caravans are starting again as the pandemic exacerbates the crisis on the border between the United States and Mexico. - The Washington...