A Honduran woman fleeing violence in Mexico gave birth after crossing into the U.S. illegally with her family. Two days later, Border Patrol made her choose: Leave her newborn in the U.S. or to go back to Mexico together.
A Border Patrol spokesman said the mother has no"legal right" to be in the United States and that the mother could have simply chosen to turn her newborn son over to child services in California.
Immigrant advocates in San Diego say this isn't the first time the Border Patrol has tried to separate a mother from her newborn. Last December, immigration lawyers saywithout her U.S.-citizen child. Her lawyers intervened to stop the separation, and the mother was allowed to pursue her asylum case from inside the U.S.
The Honduran family had crossed the Rio Grande in Texas earlier this year and tried to claim asylum in the U.S. Under the"Remain-In-Mexico" program, they were given a March court date and told to wait in Mexico. After they say they were robbed at gunpoint in Monterrey, they moved to Tijuana. Since the pandemic ramped up in March, the Department of Homeland Security has closed the border to nearly all asylum-seekers based on an order from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In June alone, the U.S. turned back more than 27,000 migrants after they were screened and fingerprinted.
"The CDC was very clear with us," Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said when he visited the San Diego border in May."We needed to make sure we do not house these individuals in our facilities, both for our workforce protection and the protection of our DHS officers, the protection of the American people, and the protection of other migrants.
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