Mexican National Guards escort four Honduran women to an immigration checkpoint after detaining them near Ciudad Hidalgo on Jan. In the early weeks of , hundreds of Central American families once again woke up and started a long northward journey together. Though the Trump administration has made it all but impossible for Central Americans to get asylum in the US, a new caravan of immigrants has set out from Honduras on foot in hopes of reaching the United States to seek asylum.
They are already facing the cruelty of US border enforcement thousands of miles before reaching the US border itself. Through a combination of threats and tariffs, the US is cajoling countries on the caravan route to turn back these desperate asylum-seekers on its behalf. Trump himself has even called on authorities to illegally shoot immigrants. But the southward expansion of border enforcement is a project that the US Customs Border and Protection has been working on for more than 15 years.
Accordingly, the Trump administration has frozen aid and deployed tariffs to force impoverished Central American countries and Mexico to enforce this most expansive vision of the US border. The bullying worked. Last June, after Trump threatened higher tariffs on Mexico, the country dispatched 15, soldiers to its southern border with the goal of turning back asylum-seekers headed north.
There, as U. News and World Report reported this month, ICE agents have been assisting Guatemalan law enforcement in the arrest of immigrants in the caravans. Immigrants themselves are aware of these risks. But there is a simple way for us to protect immigrants risking their lives seeking refuge: We must push Congress to defund the border industrial complex.
And every last one of those dollars is appropriated by Congress. Seeking asylum is a legal right, and the freedom of movement is a human right. View Comments. Oops Looks like your browser doesn't support JavaScript.
