Fleeing the Storm

When Elisa left El Salvador with her husband and son, she had no other option. The gang that controlled the area in which they lived had threatened to kill them for not paying the “tax” they imposed on the people that lived there, and one of the members had put a gun to her two-year-old son’s head to ensure she understood what would happen the next time they didn’t pay. Elisa and her husband had intended to pay the exorbitant sum demanded every month, but it wasn’t always possible on their factory worker salaries. The gang offered to lower the sum if her husband agreed to join them and become a collector in the neighborhood, but as people of faith they couldn’t agree. With the little money they were able to raise through the generosity of their families, they paid a fixer (a person that helps illegal immigrants across the border) and fled to the U.S. through Mexico.

Marta left Guatemala for similar reasons. Local drug traffickers encroached on her family’s land and killed her mother, perhaps to grow poppies or simply because they wanted the land for themselves. She fled with her daughter to the nearest big town, but after three years, they found her and threatened to kill her. She went to the police looking for protection, but they laughed at her, so she decided she had no option but to go to the United States, as her two brothers had done before her.

These are just two examples of the many people that cross Mexico every day to seek asylum in the U.S., and increasingly in Mexico, where the number of asylum claims by Central Americans has rocketed from little more than 3,000 in 2015 to over 14,000 in 2017, and even more this year.

In the last few months, I’ve interviewed some of these families in hostels in Tijuana and a detention center in Texas. I’ve changed their names to protect their identities, but their stories are real and represent only a fraction of the far larger crisis of violence that is battering the countries of Central America and leading to a constant exodus of its young people and families.

Without doubt there are also cases of Central Americans that become migrants in their search for work, but the number of people seeking asylum because they truly need it is overwhelming. Above all, it’s young people that have fled because they have no other option.

The asylum system in the United States is completely broken, and Mexico’s is already showing signs of being overrun. In the U.S., someone that seeks asylum and passes the first interview (nicknamed “credible fear,” which establishes whether there is a potential claim) can live in the country for two to four years without their case being decided. This allows plenty of opportunity for non-genuine cases – whose only desire is to stay in the country – to abuse the system, but it also denies protection to those who need it.

The Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance, or Comar, by law must make a decision on asylum claims within 45 days, but because of the number of cases and the limited resources Comar has at its disposal, deadlines are being extended in the majority of instances.

A few days ago, my colleagues Doris Meissner, Faye Hipsman and Alexander Aleinikoff published a report by the Migration Policy Institute which contained recommendations on how to speed up the asylum process in the United States, so it becomes fairer to those that need protection and deters those that seek to abuse it. They recommend a form of resolution that relies on properly trained asylum officials and less on immigration courts, which have a huge backlog. They also recommend thinking of ways to resolve the most recent cases first to bring aid to the most urgent situations quickly. In Mexico, too, a rethink is needed to reform and equip the system with the resources it needs as it faces the imminent arrival of more and more Central Americans seeking asylum (and Venezuelans now as well).

Urgent investment is also needed in hostels and legal assistance, which provide migrants fleeing violence with somewhere to stay and support for their cases when they arrive. In Texas, the Dilley Pro Bono Project and Al Otro Lado (On the Other Side) in Tijuana have been crucial in offering legal advice; in Tijuana the YMCA, Madre Assunta, Scalibrini and the Salvation Army are vital temporary places of refuge. But all of these endeavors only continue because of the generosity of individuals.

The reality is that the migratory flows we’re seeing right now are very different from those seen in previous eras. Faced with the collapse of law and order in parts of Central America and the rise of gangs and organized crime, every time increasingly large numbers of people decide to migrate, they do it not only to seek better opportunities for themselves but also to save their lives or those of their families. International agreements – and our shared humanity – oblige us to look for solutions that can offer them protection – something they’re unable to find in their own countries.