Trump's 'Illegal Return of Asylum Seekers Scheme' Has First Known Victim

In the first publicly known instance of the Trump administration implementing its new policy that forces some asylum seekers to await their U.S. immigration court hearings in Mexico, 55-year-old Carlos Gomez Perdomo of Honduras was sent to the United States’ southern neighbor on Tuesday—sparking a fresh wave of condemnation.

Critics of the policy point out that it could further endanger asylum seekers. As Melissa Crow of the Southern Poverty Law Center told Agence France-Presse: “It’s not safe for many, if not most, of these asylum seekers to wait in Mexico. Lots of them are fleeing cartel violence and domestic abusers.”

“There are examples of people being pursued by their persecutors while waiting in Mexico,” Crow noted. “It’s a horribly bad idea to implement this plan.”

“We have worked with people who are under active threat here in Mexico, who have had to move between shelters and stay in secret locations because they are being actively pursued throughout Mexico, and throughout Tijuana,” Nicole Ramos, an attorney with the Tijuana-based legal aid office Al Otro Lado told the Washington Post. “This is literally sentencing people to die.”

President Donald Trump’s administration, however, has ignored such warnings and forged ahead with what New York Immigration Coalition executive director Steven Choi described as just another part of a “systematic, deliberate effort to undermine the safety of thousands of asylum seekers and dismantle our refugee system.”