A declaration to be tough on immigration is one of the factors that drew many voters to Donald Trump. But handling the masses of people that have come from Central and South America asylum has moved beyond challenge into debacle.
There’s still a clash over using emergency power to divert additional funding from congressionally-mandating budgets to unauthorized levels of border wall spending. Confrontations with migrants have resulted in violent clashes. The administration has sought to restrict asylum claims and, in the past, Trump has seemed to argue for ending due process.
The latest administration move has been to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico until their asylum hearings and now it wants to expand the new strategy, called Migration Protection Protocols, according to BuzzFeed News.
The U.S. Has already returned about 240 people, including families, to Mexico since late January, according to U.S. News and World Report. Some migrants are afraid to stay in Mexico because they are required to wait months for hearings and large amounts of northern Mexico have been the scene of violence as government troops have battled drug cartels for a decade.
A federal court will hear a lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union before the end of the week. The ACLU looks for a judge to block the Migration Protection Protocols.
There have already been operational problems with the administration’s strategy. Four migrants were scheduled for deportation for failing to show up to initial immigration hearings on Wednesday. However, they didn’t because they were still being held in Mexico and the administration had moved up the hearings, apparently without notification.