Problems At Tent Courts And A Growing Tent Encampment; One Year Into Remain In Mexico

“People are not being permitted in these tent court facilities for merits proceedings, which is when the entirety of a person’s case is going to be put on trial.”

By Reynaldo Leaños Jr.February 3, 2020 9:30 amBorder & Immigration, Partner Organizations, Texas Newsroom, Texas Public Radio

Verónica G. Cárdenas /Texas Public Radio

White tent immigration courts as seen across the Rio Grande from an encampment where migrants and asylum seekers live in Matamoros, Mexico.

From Texas Public Radio:

For the past 18 days, a group of more than a dozen protesters have demonstrated outside a big white tent on the banks of the Rio Grande in Brownsville.

The tent serves as a pop-up immigration court built to hear thousands of asylum hearings for migrants waiting in Mexico under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, also known as Remain in Mexico.

“Even the name is such a paradox, Migrant Protection Protocols,” says Patty Brown, one of the protesters.

MPP forces asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases unfold in U.S. immigration court instead of waiting inside the U.S. At least 56,000 people have been sent back to Mexico so far.

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