On Friday, April 30th, the hundredth day of the Biden Presidency, the #SaveAsylum coalition, made up of asylum seekers, community members, faith leaders, and immigration advocates from Mexico and the U.S, gathered on both sides of the border to decry the long and dangerous wait that asylum seekers have been subjected to in Nogales, Sonora. In migrants’ attempts to escape persecution in their home countries and seek asylum in the U.S., they have been returned to similar violence and danger in Mexico. Saul from Honduras, shared his testimony during the event, saying, “A lot of people might not realize that we’re suspended in an underworld and that we can’t move in any direction. I come here fleeing crime, and the same thing is waiting for me here.”
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This was the seventh migrant-led #SaveAsylum march organized since August 2020, but the first of the Biden presidency. Some of the asylum seekers who organized this action have been expelled to Nogales under Title 42, which has kept asylum processing at a halt since the Trump Administration invoked the authority on March 21st, 2020. The organizers also included asylum seekers who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border prior to the invocation of Title 42 and have been waiting in Nogales for over a year, some since 2019, to even begin their asylum claim. Although some asylum seekers returned to Nogales in 2020 under the Migration Protection Protocols have recently been processed at the Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez ports of entry, there are still many asylum seekers in Nogales with active MPP cases who have yet to receive indication of when and how they will be processed to enter the U.S.
At the SaveAsylum march on January 19th, the eve of Biden’s inauguration, asylum seekers expressed great hope in then President-elect Biden based on the promises he made to restore the asylum process both during his campaign and upon winning the election. In the first 100 days of his presidency, he fell short on those promises. Although President Biden suspended new enrollments into MPP on his first day in office and announced in February that nearly 25,000 asylum seekers with active MPP cases would be processed to await their asylum claims in the U.S., as of the week of the march, only 3,911 of these individuals had been processed thus far. Therefore, asylum seekers organized the April 30th SaveAsylum march to take place on the symbolic hundredth day in office to emphasize the ongoing danger and uncertainty they face in Nogales, Sonora because of President Biden’s inaction and unwillingness to end various Trump-era anti-asylum policies.
At the SaveAsylum march on January 19th, the eve of Biden’s inauguration, asylum seekers expressed great hope in then President-elect Biden based on the promises he made to restore the asylum process both during his campaign and upon winning the election. In the first 100 days of his presidency, he fell short on those promises. Although President Biden suspended new enrollments into MPP on his first day in office and announced in February that nearly 25,000 asylum seekers with active MPP cases would be processed to await their asylum claims in the U.S., as of the week of the march, only 3,911 of these individuals had been processed thus far. Therefore, asylum seekers organized the April 30th SaveAsylum march to take place on the symbolic hundredth day in office to emphasize the ongoing danger and uncertainty they face in Nogales, Sonora because of President Biden’s inaction and unwillingness to end various Trump-era anti-asylum policies.
