Tent Trials for Immigrants
By: Bryce Totz
Tags: Trump Administration, In Features, Trump, Mpp, Immigration

Camping in a tent is fun for some people, but seeking justice in a tent is a reality that most people never dreamed they’d face. This is the case for immigrants impacted by the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), or “remain in Mexico” policy.

MPP is a policy that states that migrants awaiting a hearing with U.S. immigration authorities — in particular those who entered through the US-Mexico border — are returned to Mexico to await their trials. This fall, the government expanded the policy and began building tents for immigrants to plead their cases, sometimes with a judge Skyped or Zoomed in from elsewhere in the country.

In Texas along the border, for example, the government has opened tents for immigrants anticipating their hearings. Some of these immigrants take part in group hearings, then an individual hearing via video chat with a judge. This poses a problem for immigrants getting a fair hearing, immigrant advocates say.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, MPP is “a U.S. Government action whereby certain foreign individuals entering or seeking admission to the U.S. from Mexico — illegally or without proper documentation — may be returned to Mexico and wait outside of the U.S. for the duration of their immigration proceedings, where Mexico will provide them with all appropriate humanitarian protections for the duration of their stay.”

For immigrants staying along the border, it becomes very difficult to access legal counsel, according to Shana Tabak, the Executive Director of the Atlanta office of the Tahirih Justice Center, a non-profit organization that helps immigrant women and girls fleeing from violence. This also creates a problem for Adonia Simpson, a Miami-based lawyer for the organization Americans for Immigrant Justice. MPP greatly “limits the ability to assist” those at the border, said Simpson.

More than 40,000 people have been sent back to border cities in Mexico while they await their trials because of MPP.

The process starts with a master calendar hearing in a tent with many immigrants going to court for similar reasons. Those seeking entry to the U.S. proceed to their individual hearings over video. This is intended to make the trials occur in a quicker manner.

Photo by Mitch Lensink on Unsplash

“[Master Calendar Hearings] do speed trials, but are due process violations,” said Simpson. This is because immigrants are limited to counsel while participating in these.

The next step after this for an immigrant is a proceeding in front of a camera. The person ideally has their attorney on one side, the judge on another, and a translator if necessary. Although technology makes this possible, for lawyers representing immigrants, this hardly represents progress.

“Virtual trials,” those held by a video chat, do not allow for immigrants to express their feelings and emotions to a judge, said Simpson. This creates an easier situation for the judge to deny the immigrant access to asylum, or whatever else they are looking for.

According to Tabak, this makes an asylum trial close to impossible to win. For asylum-seekers in Atlanta, the grant rate is 2 percent, Tabak said, which is a remarkable decline from the grant rate in Atlanta from 2000–2005. Judges in Atlanta granted around 15 percent of asylum seekers status in that time period, according to TRAC Immigration.

Immigrants are forced to wait in Mexico while they await trial in the United States, Tabak explained, which prevents lawyers to be able to meet with their clients. Tabak is supposed to help these clients, and she is unable to access them.

“The biggest challenge I have is the amount of faith clients put in me and the system,” Tabak said.

Simpson and Tabak are both worried for their clients, as many other lawyers around the country are. They believe that it is unfair, and unlawful to do this to immigrants.

For the government, they are creating faster trials by proceeding with them in tents, and over video. They are doing exactly what they have been ordered to do. The process is successful, Trump administration officials argue, in that it’s doing what it intended: decreasing the number of immigrants who set foot in the US.

MPP has not stopped people from applying for asylum in the United States. But immigration advocates are afraid that thousands of people will be turned away at the border and not have the right to ask for for asylum.

The Trump administration is making immigration difficult for people who want to leave their countries. But it’s also difficult for the lawyers who have taken on the challenge of advocating for them.

“Forget about ‘build the wall,’” Tabak said. “More important is that the administration is creating a legal wall.”