Today, a group of Project Corazon clients who are asylum seekers and have disabilities or other urgent medical conditions sued the Trump Administration to protect their wellbeing and safety.
Lawyers for Good Government’s Project Corazon Matamoros originated the suit, which is the first class-action suit challenging the “Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, or Remain in Mexico)” policy’s discriminatory practices on the basis of disability.
Read more about how the suit came to be, and what you can do to help support asylum seekers with disabilities or other medical conditions in Matamoros below.
“Remain in Mexico” is illegal and dangerous
In July 2019 the "Migrant Protection Protocols" (MPP) began to be applied at the border crossing at Matamoros/Brownsville. Under this policy, any Spanish speaking person from any country seeking asylum and preliminarily qualifying for asylum relief is given a hearing date far in the future and forced to “Remain in Mexico” while their case is pending. These asylum seekers must wait many more months for hearings and are vulnerable to violence, kidnappings, living in refugee-like conditions, and other hardship. Courts have ruled this MPP policy is illegal and unconstitutional but the United States Supreme Court is allowing this to continue until it rules on the appeal.
Within a few weeks of MPP coming to Matamoros, Lawyers for Good Government established a program to provide legal assistance full-time to asylum seekers in the Matamoros camp. Program Director Charlene D’Cruz, applying her many years of asylum immigration legal practice and her deep knowledge of disability law, quickly realized that the government was not even applying its own rules for the illegal program.
Under MPPs own rules, there are certain people who are exempt from being placed into the program, including people with medical vulnerabilities such as a disability or serious medical condition. Charlene expected to be able to walk an asylum seekers with a disability back to the entry point on the bridge, show the rule to the guards, explain the facts of the person’s exemptions, and have the person to be allowed to cross as exempt from MPP, that is, to be granted “parole” to remain in the United States while waiting for her final hearing on the asylum application.
Unfortunately, time and time again, that’s not what happened.
Some Individual Wins
Charlene found that Customs and Border Patrol would respond to her advocacy on behalf of medically-vulnerable asylum seekers arbitrarily. She didn’t let that deter her.
She spent countless hours on the bridge between Matamoros and Brownsville, physically walking asylum seekers to the CBP offices and advocating for their parole in person. Sometimes she was successful, getting asylum seekers released into the United States to await their immigration proceedings safety and with regular access to healthcare.
One example is a 7-year-old Honduran girl with an infected opening in her groin known as a fistula—an aperture through which excrement seeped from her colon to the surface of her skin. It took Charlene and a team of doctors more than 5 separate trips to the border crossing and hours of imploring with Customs and Border Patrol, but she was finally released to stay in the United States and receive the life-saving medical treatment she needed. You can read more about her case here.
Since last fall, Project Corazon Matamoros has been able to assist over twenty families with vulnerable members (over 50 people) in crossing to safety and gaining parole while they await their hearing on the merits of their asylum claim. Only because this highly experienced team of lawyers and staff understand the law, and understand issues of disabilities, and were right there in the camp every day, could these families be safe.
“In an arbitrary system, the only way to work is with pressure”
Unfortunately, for every asylum seeker we were able to secure parole, there were many more who were unable to enter the United States despite our advocacy. In these cases, the government refused to follow its own rules, let alone the laws, and so many people with disabilities have been forced to stay in extremely high risk situations while they await their hearings on asylum claims.
Our clients have disabilities and severe medical conditions. They should not be stuck waiting in inhumane and dangerous conditions in Matamoros.
We realized that if individualized pressure wouldn’t work on Customs and Border Patrol, we should try to work more systematically as a group with other organizations. As Program Director Charlene D’Cruz says, “In an arbitrary system, the only way to work is with pressure.”
We reached out to Texas Civil Rights Project, Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, Al Otro Lado, and the law firm Orrick, and together, the group is bringing a lawsuit.
The lawsuit argues that the Trump administration is violating the Administrative Procedures Act by failing to abide by its own stated policy, trapping hundreds of asylum seekers with disabilities and their families in Mexico at enormous risk to their health and safety. These violations also infringe on federal disability protections, including Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973.
If the lawsuit succeeds, not only would it hold the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) accountable for breaking its own rules, hundreds of class members with disabilities would likely be allowed to wait in safer conditions stateside with their sponsors.
How You Can Help Asylum Seekers with Disabilities
Here are 3 concrete things you can do to help asylum seekers with disabilities and medical conditions right now:
Donate to L4GG’s Project Corazon. You can directly support our efforts on this historic class-action lawsuit. If successful, hundreds and perhaps thousands of our clients and other asylum seekers with disabilities, and those with severe and emergent medical conditions, can get the relief they deserve.
Read and share this exclusive in Time about the case. We know the news cycle is neverending, but asylum seekers with disabilities deserve our time and our attention. The more we can bring a spotlight to their plight, the better chance we have at the government responding to public pressure. Please help us get the word out.
If you're a lawyer at a large law firm, ask your pro bono coordinator whether your firm is part of Project Corazon. If your firm is already a Project Corazon partner, there may be immediate opportunities for you to volunteer to help asylum seekers with their cases. If your firm would like to learn more about partnering with us, please ask your pro bono coordinator to email us at corazon@L4GG.org.