MEXICALI, Mexico _ From the roadside, Oswaldo Ortiz-Luna offered a box of candy to the cars idling in the golden dust of northern Mexico. His wife hawked another box of sweets farther up the line of traffic, perching their 18-month-old daughter on one hip. Sticky fruit and tears smudged the baby's cheeks.
As the sun went down, Oswaldo and his family of six hadn't yet sold enough candy for the roughly $6 they needed to spend the night at a nearby shelter. They are among the thousands of asylum-seekers trapped just beyond the border under the Trump administration's signature policy _ "Remain in Mexico."
Under the Migrant Protection Protocols _ better known as Remain in Mexico _ Trump administration officials have pushed 35,122 asylum-seekers back across the U.S. southern border in roughly seven months, according to Homeland Security Department reports reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. One-third of the migrants were returned to Mexico from California. The vast majority have been scattered throughout Mexico within the last 60 days.
While their cases wind through court in the United States, the asylum-seekers are forced to wait in Mexico, in cities that the U.S. State Department considers some of the most dangerous in the world. They have been attacked, sexually assaulted, and extorted. A number have died.
In dozens of interviews and in court proceedings, current and former officials, judges, lawyers and advocates for asylum-seekers said that Homeland Security officials implementing Remain in Mexico appear to be violating U.S. law, and the human cost is rising. Testimony from another dozen asylum-seekers confirmed that they were being removed without the safeguards provided by U.S. law. The alleged legal violations include denying asylum-seekers' rights and knowingly putting them at risk of physical harm _ against federal regulations and the Immigration and Nationality Act, the foundation of the U.S. immigration system. U.S. law grants migrants the right to seek protection in the United States.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers are writing the phrase "domicilio conocido," or "known address," on asylum-seekers' paperwork instead of a legally required address, making it nearly impossible for applicants stuck in Mexico to be notified of any changes to their cases or upcoming court dates. By missing court hearings, applicants can then be permanently barred from asylum in the U.S.
Meanwhile, some federal asylum officers who are convinced they are sending asylum-seekers back to their deaths told The Times that they have refused to implement the Remain in Mexico policy at risk of being fired. They say it violates the United States' decadeslong legal obligations to not return people to persecution.
Homeland Security headquarters, as well as Customs and Border Protection, the agency charged with primary enforcement of the policy, refused repeated requests for interviews or data on the policy, citing "law enforcement sensitivity."
For President Donald Trump, however, whose political priority is to restrict even legal immigration to the United States, the Remain in Mexico policy has been his single most successful effort: One known asylum-seeker subjected to the policy has won the ability to stay in the U.S.
Oswaldo said his family fled their hometown outside Guatemala's capital in February after his older sons refused to join MS-13 and gang members threatened to kill them. While in Mexico, he said police beat and robbed them, and local gangs tried to kidnap his 7-year-old daughter. They rode freight trains to the U.S. border, Oswaldo running for the trains with the baby on his chest in a bright pink carrier.
The family claimed asylum in April with U.S. authorities in Calexico, a small agricultural city in eastern California across from Mexicali. Officials sent them back to Mexico, telling them to report to the border again a month later and 120 miles west, in Tijuana. There, they'd be brought across the border for a court hearing in San Diego, then sent back to Tijuana. Officials separated the case of Oswaldo's eldest son, 21, from the rest of the family's case.
"Life was already so difficult," Oswaldo said. When U.S. officials returned them to Mexico, he said, "it was hard to take."
After unveiling the policy in December, Homeland Security officials did not push the first asylum-seekers back to Mexico until Jan. 28, launching the program in San Ysidro, south of San Diego. By the end of March, they'd expanded the policy east to El Paso.
In May, a federal appeals court ruled that the policy could continue until hearings on its legality in October. With the court's blessing, the administration expanded the policy to the rest of the U.S.-Mexico border, and to any Spanish speaker, not just Central Americans. In less than three months, the number of removals quadrupled.
In July, U.S. officials began returning asylum-seekers from the rest of Texas to Nuevo Laredo and then Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.
The State Department gives Tamaulipas a level 4 "do not travel" warning _ the same as Syria.
At least 141 migrants under the Remain in Mexico program have become victims of violence in that country, according to Human Rights First, a nonpartisan advocacy group. The nonprofit submitted a public complaint about the policy to the Homeland Security inspector general's office and its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties on Aug. 26.
During an August media briefing, Mark Morgan, the acting head of Customs and Border Protection, told The Times, "I would never participate in something I thought was illegal." He added that the judicial system would ultimately "determine the legality" of the policy.
He said he was unaware of any incidents in which an asylum-seeker was harmed under Remain in Mexico, but he said the U.S. didn't track what happened to migrants once they were returned to Mexico. "That's up to Mexico," he said.
Roberto Velasco, spokesman for Mexico's foreign ministry, said the policy was a "unilateral action" and that the U.S. was "solely responsible" for ensuring due process for asylum-seekers returned to Mexico.
While saying the policy is for the immigrants' own protection, Morgan said it was also intended to deter asylum-seekers. He claimed, as the president often does, that many asylum applicants had fraudulent cases. "If you come here with a kid, it's not going to be an automatic passport to the United States," Morgan said. "I'm hoping that that message will get back."
When Oswaldo and his family returned to Mexicali in May after their first hearing in San Diego, they had lost their place in a nearby shelter. They're now on their fourth hearing.
Unable to obtain work permits promised by the Mexican government, and potentially years away from a final decision on his family's asylum claim in the U.S., Oswaldo gestured with the candy box, saying it was all the family had.
"This is it."
