A team from Latino USA, led by veteran journalist Maria Hinojosa, reports on the increasingly dire and confusing situation facing refugees seeking asylum in the United States via its southern border. Their reporting looks at the personal impact that comes from the latest dramatic political and policy changes that aim to prevent refugees from seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border by moving refugees to southern Mexico and Guatemala.
Over the past few months, the U.S., Mexico, and international organizations have encouraged or forcibly moved refugees away from the U.S. southern border. The U.S. has begun flying Central American refugees to Honduras and Guatemala and it is threatening to do the same to Mexican refugees. Advocacy groups say vulnerable people are being sent to dangerous places and are not receiving due process for their asylum claims. In addition to those actions, Mexican authorities and international groups in Juarez, Matamoros, and Tijuana bus some refugees to southern Mexico on a voluntary and sometimes forced basis to await their asylum court dates on the northern border.
The Latino USA team reports from El Paso Texas and Ciudad Juarez talking with refugees from Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean and Africa about how these policies have impacted them and their futures. They then traveled south to the southern Mexico border town of Tapachula to learn how these refugees are bearing the latest challenges and what they plan to do now that the border they'd hoped to cross is once again thousands of miles away.
