Medical screenings are the latest U.S. tactic to discourage asylum seekers, advocates say
for three months, Claudia Quesada Rodriguez and her 12-year-old daughter Maria Jose lived in a migrant camp in this Mexican border city waiting for their day in U.S. immigration court.
Now it had finally arrived.
Mother and daughter woke early Wednesday and made their way to the border bridge, where they waited with dozens of other asylum seekers who also had hearings scheduled at a tent court on the other side.
But soon after the two entered the country, U.S. Customs and Border Protection staff noticed the girl looked ill and took her temperature and a nose swab.
Then they sent the pair back to Mexico and the judge postponed their hearing to March 12 — another three months of waiting after Quesada said she fled gang threats in El Salvador.
“It’s an injustice,” Quesada, 36, told her daughter after they walked back. “There are a lot of sick people here and when you’re living in a tent, what can you do?”
Migrant rights advocates say that medical screenings have become the latest tactic used by the U.S. government to discourage asylum seekers from pursuing their claims.
“It’s just one more example of the arbitrariness of the process,” said Denise Gilman, who directs the University of Texas Law School Immigration Clinic in Austin. “It’s not really an adjudicatory process — it’s more of an obstacle course.”
Indeed, at the Matamoros camp where Quesada and her daughter have been living, migrants said it’s common for those who fail medical screenings to return home.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-12-10/migrants-returned-to-mexico-barred-from-u-s-courts
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