NEW YORK _ A group of women who fled their Latin American countries seeking asylum in the United States are suing the Trump administration for sending them back to unsafe conditions in Mexico to await their immigration court hearings.
The women, suing on behalf of themselves and their young children, were all caught by Border Patrol after entering the U.S., but were quickly forced back over the border even as their applications for asylum were pending, according to the suit filed in Brooklyn Federal Court.
"Border Patrol summarily returned them to Mexico, where they have experienced extreme danger and hardship," reads the suit.
At issue is the Migrant Protection Protocols, implemented by the Trump administration in 2018, which allowed them to return people who cross the border back to Mexico "for the duration of their immigration proceedings."
One asylum-seeker, Cinthya Vanessa Castillo Sambula, 29, came through Mexico to the United States from Honduras, where she had been threatened and stalked by two men who had attacked a relative of hers with a machete, according to the lawsuit.
Sambula, six months pregnant at the time, entered the United States in November 2019 and was detained by Border Patrol. She was sent back to Mexico without money and given a February immigration court date, the suit claims.
She waited in Mexico for her court date, then missed her court date when she went into labor, according to court papers. She was ordered removed to Mexico again and remains in Monterrey _ even though her mother lives in Brooklyn, the suit says.
In another case, a 23-year-old transgender Honduran woman was forced back to Mexico after getting caught by Border Patrol. Living in a homeless encampment south of the border, the woman, known as Jane Doe in the suit, was assaulted by a group of men, according to the lawsuit. Mexican authorities did nothing to protect her, the suit claims.
"Plainly aware of her gender identity, the defendants nonetheless returned her to Mexico, where she has faced horrific abuse and lives in daily fear for her life," the suit claims. "She now has been on the edge of survival in Mexico for 10 months, without having a single hearing in immigration court on her asylum claim."
The lawsuit calls on the federal courts to declare the Trump administration's enforcement of the Migrant Protection Protocols illegal, and allow the women to enter the states for at least the duration of their immigration court cases.
"Substantially all asylum-seekers are returned to Mexico without consideration for their safety or their ability to litigate asylum claims while living in danger and destitution in Mexico," wrote lawyers with the New York Civil Liberties Union, who represent the women and their families.
