https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2021\/03\/20\/border-family-separation-mexico-biden-477309<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“The door to the U.S. has been shut tight to asylum seekers since last March, about the time when Janiana first arrived in Tijuana, when the Trump administration issued an order at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic that every migrant \u2014 child or adult \u2014 would be immediately \u201cexpelled\u201d back to Mexico or their home country if they attempted to cross the border, without even a chance to make a case that the persecution they face qualifies them to stay. After he took office this year, Joe Biden kept the policy largely in place, but began to admit unaccompanied minors even while continuing to expel both adults and children who enter with families. Since the shift in policy, some parents and guardians have made the devastating decision, calculated only out of desperation, to send their children off ahead of them, alone, to cross the border.<\/p>\n
The result is a new form of family separation \u2014 but instead of happening at the hands of federal agents in American government facilities, it\u2019s taking place, family by family, in camps like the one Janiana lives in. The fact that minors won\u2019t be expelled like everyone else has rapidly spread by word of mouth across the length of the border. And while many families choose to stick together, the pressure to separate weighs heaviest on the most vulnerable \u2014 families who fear death, whether from persecutors who have followed them to the border, or from extreme hunger.<\/p>\n
For Janiana, the possibility of being sent back to Honduras reads as a death sentence. She shows me the scars from her torture at the hands of a powerful gang back home that her family got on the wrong side of. Fearing further reprisals, Janiana fled with her sister\u2019s children”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“When the Trump administration implemented the Migrant Protection Protocols \u2014 better known as the \u201cRemain in Mexico\u201d program \u2014 in December 2018 to force asylum seekers to wait for their hearings outside of the U.S., the policy exempted unaccompanied minors, and many parents released to Mexico with their children made the same decision migrant families are making today: to send their children to cross the border alone so they at least could wait in the U.S.
\nThen the pandemic hit. In March 2020, the White House strong-armed the Centers for Disease Control to invoke an obscure public health order, Title 42, which gives the executive the power to close the border in a time of health emergency. Citing Covid-19, the U.S. began to immediately turn away thousands of people who would normally be able to make their asylum cases in court \u2014 including unaccompanied children.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“The White House has, as its spokesperson indicated, repeatedly told migrants that \u201cnow is not the time to come.\u201d But for would-be asylees like Janiana, the act of leaving home to travel thousands of miles northward in a perilous journey in search of safety isn\u2019t something they can just delay for a more convenient time in the calendar. And, like her, many didn\u2019t leave recently. They\u2019ve been waiting at the border for months.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“In Tijuana, Janiana says she\u2019s grappled seriously with the idea of separating from her niece\u2019s son. (Her niece, who is too old to be considered a minor, wasn\u2019t available to comment for this story.)<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a truly heartbreaking choice to make,\u201d she says, as tears start to well in her eyes. \u201cAfter everything they have gone through with me. We have gone days without food, together.\u201d On a bus ride to Tijuana, she says the baby went three days without anything to eat or drink besides flour tortillas and bottled water that a kind Cuban migrant shared with them. Sometimes, when she\u2019s feeling at her lowest, Janiana says she has been most tempted to send the baby to cross the border alone, but she remains resolute for now that they must remain together. However, she can understand how others have made the decision already.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[25,780,945],"class_list":["post-4751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-immigration","tag-joe-biden","tag-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4751"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4752,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4751\/revisions\/4752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}