Mexicans are often denied asylum in the United States.
These are the most frequent applicants for humanitarian protection in the United States. Yet, they are also the ones most frequently denied asylum by the judicial Immigration System.
According to the Executive Office for Immigration Review’s most recent annual report, it reviewed 88,580 asylum applications from Mexicans and Guatemalans in fiscal year 2022. Only 4 percent approved Mexicans, while only 8 percent of Guatemalans or Hondurans who came up for review in that year’s fiscal year received a positive decision. The grant rate for Salvadorans stood at 9 percent.
According to EOIR, the grant rate for Russians was 61 per cent last year, while 59 percent of Iranians and 53 per percent of Chinese received positive outcomes in asylum-only hearings.
Iliana Holguin, El Paso immigration lawyer, stated that asylum denial rates for Mexicans have been high.
Asylum requires that a person must not only fear persecution at home by the government or any group they cannot control but also be targeted for specific reasons.
“There are five specific protection grounds: race and religion, nationality, political opinions, membership in a certain social group, and membership in a particular socio-economic group. Holguin explained that Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries have a problem in that it is difficult to prove someone has suffered because of one of these five grounds.
In the past four years, drug violence has forced thousands of Mexican families from their homeland. Many of them have arrived in Juarez, across from El Paso in search of protection in the United States. Border Report has previously interviewed them about the stories of drug traffickers who murder their brothers or sons, or kick people out of their homes.
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Eladio Mea, who appeared at the Juarez migrant shelter in Juarez last year, claimed that members of a cartel extorted his family and threatened to kill his son.
“We are between two cartels. They came at night and gave us so many hours for our departure. He said, “We left at night to make sure they didn’t hurt us.”
Border Report has been told by others that the cartels visited their towns in Zacatecas and Guanajuato states and instructed the men to guard drug shipments and kill rivals or they would be executed.
They are the most numerous seekers of humanitarian protection in the United States, yet they are the ones who are most often denied asylum by the judicial immigration system. https://t.co/H0kY0zdWUj
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Holguin stated that such dire circumstances alone are not sufficient to win an asylum claim.
The cartels and corruption in Mexico are the main problems. They also extort money. They won’t be eligible for asylum if they can prove what happened was due to their race, religion or nationality.
Mexicans in Exile founder Carlos Spector and himself an immigration lawyer said that high denial rates for Mexicans are due to U.S.-Mexico relationships. To grant political asylum is to paint the country of the asylum-seeker as a failing state. Swift’s expulsions of Mexicans in violation of Title 42 public health law have also sent the message that asylum would not be granted easily to the country’s citizens, he stated.
He agrees that it is not enough to be a victim of criminals for Mexicans seeking asylum. He has long maintained that Mexicans were victims of cartels, with the consent or assistance of Mexican law enforcement.
Spector said that authorized crime is when the crooks do not act without the authority and often in conjunction with the state. He has represented many victims of cartels that he claims were run with impunity by the government.
Spector stated that the EOIR data indicates that many Mexicans are not getting asylum, but can stay in the United States as a result of alternative arrangements such as the Convention Against Torture. Some people who were tortured or beaten by police officers, or criminals with the approval of a government official, may be exempt from deportation.
Administrative closure is a benefit that removes an immigration case from the court system indefinitely for some of his clients. This includes Sinaloa cartel victims in agricultural communities southeast of Juarez. Others seeking asylum in Mexico include the families of “disappeared”, or abducted persons, as well as police officers who were threatened for their work and informants for the government.
Spector and Holguin urged Mexican asylum seekers to seek legal advice before applying for asylum. This was because of the long odds they face.
