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For Immediate Release
February, 21 2021, 11:00pm EDT
Contact:
Tel: +1-212-216-1832,Email:,hrwpress@hrw.org
US: Take New Approach at Mexico Border
Video shows family separated under Trump policy have reason to hope.
WASHINGTON
The administration of United States President Joe Biden should move swiftly to ensure fair, dignified, and humane treatment of asylum seekers and migrants at the border, Human Rights Watch and the Iowa City Catholic Worker said in a video released today. The video follows a family still separated after almost two years under the "Remain in Mexico" program, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
The administration of former President Donald Trump sent over 71,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico under MPP, adopted in 2019. President Biden ended the returns last month. Some asylum seekers sent to wait in Mexico with active cases in immigration courts may sign up to start a process to enter the US as of February 19, 2021, according to a Department of Homeland Security announcement.
The new video follows one family from El Salvador - Alejandro, Juliza, and their infant son, Anderson - who were separated at the border in 2019. US officials forced Alejandro to wait in Mexico while eight-months pregnant Juliza continued alone to claim asylum in the United States, where she was welcomed by the Iowa City Catholic Worker, a Gamaliel affiliate. Returned to one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico, Alejandro was kidnapped and abused, treatment that has become very common for migrants and asylum seekers in Mexico.
"Faith communities have done crucial work to support asylum seekers and keep families together, but it should not be solely up to them," said Policy Advocate with Faith Communities at Human Rights Watch Victoria Strang. "While the Biden administration has taken some positive steps, bold action is needed to transform the US border response into one that treats all asylum seekers with dignity."
With the announcement of a process for some asylum seekers in Mexico to enter the United States, Alejandro and Juliza have a reason to hope that they may soon be together again. But the Biden administration has only promised to allow back about a third of those previously subject to MPP, and it is continuing summary expulsions of asylum seekers without due process under a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order adopted at the Trump White House's urging over the objections of career public health officials.
"I pray Alejandro and all the refugees currently trapped in Mexico are permitted to enter the United States to pursue their asylum claims and reunite with their families and I call on the President to protect them," said Father Guillermo Trevino, Jr., a Catholic priest from West Liberty, Iowa. "Iowa City Catholic Workers remain committed to building a better world where the God-given dignity of all humans is respected no matter the color of their skin or their immigration status."
The Biden administration should implement a new approach at the border that treats asylum seekers in a fair, efficient, and rights-respecting manner that also protects public health. That means ending summary expulsion and return, prioritizing a humanitarian reception system, providing sufficient resources and structural reforms to process asylum claims fairly and efficiently, and moving quickly to address agency impunity, Human Rights Watch said.
Human Rights Watch is one of the world's leading independent organizations dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. By focusing international attention where human rights are violated, we give voice to the oppressed and hold oppressors accountable for their crimes. Our rigorous, objective investigations and strategic, targeted advocacy build intense pressure for action and raise the cost of human rights abuse. For 30 years, Human Rights Watch has worked tenaciously to lay the legal and moral groundwork for deep-rooted change and has fought to bring greater justice and security to people around the world.
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Justice Jackson Condemns Supreme Court's Decision to Fast-Track Louisiana Electoral Map Ruling
The Monday evening decision "is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map."
May 05, 2026
Warning that the US Supreme Court's right-wing majority was appearing to give its approval of Louisiana's decision to suspend federal primary elections in the state following the court's ruling on the state's congressional map last week, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday evening was the lone dissenter as the court agreed to immediately finalize the ruling instead of waiting the customary 32 days.
By expediting the ruling, suggested Jackson, the court was taking an obviously political stance in support of efforts to ensure Louisiana Republicans can quickly redraw the state's congressional map to yield more electoral wins for the GOP.
"The court’s decision to buck our usual practice," wrote Jackson, "is tantamount to an approval of Louisiana’s rush to pause the ongoing election in order to pass a new map."
Ordinarily, the court would wait 32 days to transmit an opinion to the lower courts, giving the losing party time to request that the justices reconsider the case.
In a brief, unsigned opinion Monday evening, the court said that the Black voters who had defended the state's 2024 congressional map at the center of Louisiana v. Callais had "not expressed any intent to ask this court to reconsider its judgment.”
In Louisiana v. Callais last week, the court ruled along ideological lines that the 2024 map—which was drawn to better represent the population of Louisiana, where one-third of residents are Black—was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The ruling effectively struck down the last remaining provision of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which held that voters of color can challenge racially discriminatory electoral maps.
The map that was struck down ensured there were two majority-minority districts in the state. Louisiana's Republican-controlled legislature is expected to try to eliminate at least one of those districts, with a new map yielding five Republicans and one Democrat in the US House.
In transmitting last week's ruling to the lower courts without delay, the court granted a request from the group of white voters who had challenged the state's map.
"Because it is for the District Court to either draw an interim remedial map or approve a legislative remedy, jurisdiction should be returned to the District Court as soon as possible so that it can oversee an orderly process," wrote the plaintiffs.
The Supreme Court granted the plaintiffs' request days after Republican Gov. Jeff Landry took executive action to suspend the state's US House primaries in an effort to ensure they take place after the new map is drawn.
That action, wrote Jackson on Monday, had "a strong political undercurrent" that the court's latest move appeared to openly endorse.
"Louisiana’s hurried response to the Callais decision unfolds in the midst of an ongoing statewide election, against the backdrop of a pitched redistricting battle among state governments that appear to be acting as proxies for their favored political parties," wrote Jackson, noting that the court has only expedited a decision twice in the last 25 years. "As always, the court has a choice... To avoid the appearance of partiality here, we could, as per usual, opt to stay on the sidelines and take no position by applying our default procedures."
"But, today, the court chooses the opposite. Not content to have decided the law, it now takes steps to influence its implementation," she wrote.
John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said that the court was going against its practice of following the "Purcell doctrine," which came out of a 2006 Supreme Court order and holds that "courts should not change voting or election rules too close to an election in order to avoid confusion for voters and election officials alike."
The Supreme Court, said Bisognano, "decided to inject itself into an ongoing election and at this point no one can say otherwise."
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Rejecting Trump Admin's Account, Iran Says US Killed Five Civilians in Strait of Hormuz
"Events in Hormuz make clear that there's no military solution to a political crisis," said Iran's top diplomat.
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Iranian officials on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration's account of events in the Strait of Hormuz over the preceding 24 hours, saying that the US military attacked two cargo boats and killed at least five civilians amid President Donald Trump's ploy to force open the critical waterway.
Iran's state-affiliated media carried comments from an unnamed Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander who said that American forces "attacked two small boats carrying people on their way from Khasab on the coast of Oman to the coast of Iran on Monday," killing five people on board, and that no IRGC vessels were hit. US forces, said the commander, "must be held accountable for their crime."
The IRGC commander's version of events was reported hours after the head of the US Central Command told the press that two US-flagged commercial vessels successfully transited the Strait of Hormuz with the help of American forces, which purportedly shot down drones and destroyed six Iranian speedboats that were said to be targeting the ships.
Monday's exchanges came amid Trump's newly announced scheme—titled Project Freedom—to "guide" vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed in response to the US-Israeli war and the Trump administration's subsequent blockade of Iran.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a top Iranian negotiator and speaker of the country's parliament, said in a statement posted online early Tuesday that "the new equation of the Strait of Hormuz is in the process of being solidified."
"The security of shipping and energy transit has been jeopardized by the United States and its allies through the violation of the ceasefire and the imposition of a blockade; of course, their evil will diminish," he wrote. "We know full well that the continuation of the status quo is intolerable for America; while we have not even begun yet."
The US military has not yet responded to Iran's statements on developments in the Strait of Hormuz. Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Dan Caine are set to hold a press conference on Tuesday morning.
Abbas Araghchi, Iran's foreign minister, said Tuesday that "events in Hormuz make clear that there's no military solution to a political crisis."
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Florida Voters Sue Over Trump-DeSantis 'Gerrymander on Top of an Already Egregious Gerrymander'
"This should be a clear-cut case, and all Floridians should see justice for this blatant attempt to reduce their rightful voting power even more than before," said the head of one voting rights group.
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As Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday did his part to advance President Donald Trump's gerrymandering spree by signing a rigged congressional map into law, state voters swiftly sued over the newly drawn districts.
"Signed, Sealed, Delivered," DeSantis posted on social media Monday, celebrating Florida's new US House of Representatives map that's expected to give the GOP a 24-4 advantage, up from 20-8. It's part of Trump's campaign to redraw districts in various Republican-governed states in hopes of keeping control of both chambers of Congress.
Meanwhile, Floridians supported by the National Redistricting Foundation (NRF) and the Equal Ground Education Fund filed a lawsuit against the state Legislature and Secretary of State Cory Byrd over the map in the Circuit Court of Leon County.
"In 2010, the people of Florida voted overwhelmingly to enact the Fair Districts Amendment to the state's constitution, imposing constraints on the worst abuses of congressional redistricting and entrusting the Florida judiciary to enforce those safeguards," notes the complaint, which goes on to highlight a map tossed out by the Florida Supreme Court in 2015.
The filing also lays out the current battle initiated by Trump last year: He pressured Texas Republicans to redraw their state's US House map. North Carolina and Missouri's GOP leaders followed suit, prompting voters in California and Virginia to support drawing new districts that favor Democrats, who aim to reclaim congressional majorities in the November midterm elections.
The complaint then lays out DeSantis' monthslong push to redraw Florida's districts to appease the increasingly authoritarian president, in violation of the state constitution. It stresses that recent "changes to Florida's congressional plan come on the heels of a 2022 redistricting plan that already substantially advantaged Republicans."
The state's new map "is, by traditional measures of partisan gerrymandering, one of the most extreme gerrymanders in American history," the document declares. It was "made by professionals with sophisticated tools and a clear partisan goal: to pack and crack Democratic voters with surgical precision and deprive Florida voters of a fair map guaranteed to them by the Florida Constitution."
The Democratic and unregistered Florida voters behind the case, who live in various districts, asked the court to block the latest rigged map from being used in this year's election and strike it down completely.
"Florida's mid-decade gerrymander is a blatant violation of the state's constitution," said NAF executive director Marina Jenkins in a statement. "This map is a gerrymander on top of an already egregious gerrymander that cracks apart numerous districts in nonsensical ways with the intent to favor one party over another."
"Given the clear violations of state law, this should be a clear-cut case," Jenkins added, "and all Floridians should see justice for this blatant attempt to reduce their rightful voting power even more than before."
The plaintiffs are represented by the Orlando-based firm King, Blackwell, Zehnder, & Wermuth as well as Elias Law Group, which was founded by Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias.
Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, and US House Democratic Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) also spoke out against the new state map on Monday.
"The lame-duck governor of Florida is auditioning for Donald Trump's undying love after his presidential aspirations were crushed in 2024," Jeffries said in a statement. "Democrats have brutally thwarted the MAGA midterm power grab, and we will continue to push back aggressively. Today, less than a week after corrupt Republican legislators approved an unconstitutional partisan map leaked to a right-wing news outlet, Ron DeSanctimonious signed it into law."
"By his own lawyer's admission, these boundaries were drawn with partisan intent, a shameless disregard for Florida voters who overwhelmingly passed the Fair Districts Amendment to bar political favoritism and incumbent protection in 2010," Jeffries emphasized. "Ron DeSantis knows this gerrymander is a direct violation of Florida law."
As Politico reported Monday
A top aide for the GOP governor acknowledged last week that he relied on political data as part of his map drawing effort—a potential violation of "Fair Districts" standards.
Attorneys for DeSantis contended that these anti-gerrymandering standards no longer needed to be followed because the state Supreme Court last year ruled that the minority voter protections that were also part of the same amendment did not need to be strictly followed. They said the amendment was a "package" that could not be broken apart.
DeSantis and his Republican allies have also cited Florida's growth as a reason to redraw the lines, but the new map relies on the same 2020 US Census data that was used in the current map, which has been approved by both state and federal courts.
The fight playing out in Florida comes after the US Supreme Court last week gutted the remnants of the Voting Rights Act in a battle over Louisiana's congressional map that preceded Trump's gerrymandering campaign. Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry responded by suspending a primary election already underway, sparking lawsuits from civil rights groups and voters.
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