WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st December, 2018) Mexico should not enable the Trump administration's policy forcing asylum-seekers to remain in the country while they await their applications to be processed in the United States, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Border Rights Center advocacy manager Cynthia Pompa said in a press release.
"Mexico should not enable the Trump administration's anti-immigrant agenda," Pompa said in the release on Thursday.
Earlier in the day, US Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that asylum-seeking migrants who cross the US southwest border would be sent back to Mexico where they must wait for a ruling by immigration courts on their asylum applications.
Pompa called on both the US and Mexican governments to change their approach on immigration, adding that the United States must prioritize port of entry reforms and allocated resources to promptly and fairly process asylum-seekers on the US side of the border.
ACLU Senior Policy Counsel Chris Rickerd said in the release the policy is the latest in a series of cruelly punitive moves by the Trump administration that are at odds with the US commitment to provide protection to those fleeing persecution.
"Forcing these families, many with small children, to be trapped in Mexico while their claims await adjudication in the US also offends due process and endangers lives," Rickerd said.
As described, the Trump administration policy would condemn migrants to fend for themselves and would expose them to some of the same sorts of violence that they experienced in Central America, Rickerd added.
