Amnesty Urges Canada, Mexico Not to Help Trump Attack Asylum-Seekers

Ten days into U.S. President Donald Trump's second term, Amnesty International Americas director Ana Piquer on Wednesday urged the Canadian and Mexican governments to refuse to participate in the Republican's attacks on migrants seeking safety.

Since returning to the White House, Trump has taken various executive actions to advance his far-right immigration agenda, including declaring a national emergency, attempting to end birthright citizenship, enabling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to arrest people in sensitive locations like schools and churches, reinstating the Migrant Protection Protocols—also known as the "Remain in Mexico" policy—and effectively halting asylum by shutting down CBP One, a mobile application that migrants used to schedule appointments with Customs and Border Protection at ports of entry.

"The executive actions adopted by President Trump severely impact the rights of people seeking safety and place countless lives at risk, fabricating nonexisting threats to expand militarization, externalization of borders, generalized use of immigration detention, expedited removals, and criminalization of migrant rights defenders," said Piquer. "These policies make it near impossible for individuals to seek asylum in the United States and will result in thousands of people being forcibly returned to places where their lives or safety are at risk."

"President Trump is also calling for the use of criminal prosecutions for people crossing irregularly into the United States, a policy that resulted in the mass separations of families during Trump's first term," she noted. "To this day, there are families—mostly from Central America—who have still not been reunited from the first iteration of this cruel policy."

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, toldThe Guardian earlier this month that "given the lack of records, it's impossible to know precisely how many families remain separated" due to the policy from Trump's first term, but "we think there may be around a thousand families or more that we can't confirm have been reunited."

Nodding to a weekend dispute between the Trump administration and Colombia, Piquer said that "the United States is also pressuring countries to accept deportation flights with individuals that are not nationals of those countries and threatening sanctions on those countries that refuse. All these policies have implications for countries throughout the Americas, continuing the troubling trend of the United States entering into bilateral agreements aimed at deterring migration."

The Amnesty leader specifically took aim at the Canada-United States Safe Third Country Agreement, which requires most people seeking refugee protection to do so in whichever of the two nations they enter first. The treaty has been in effect since 2004.

"The agreement has forced individuals to attempt dangerous border crossings and has pushed people underground in order to seek safety," Piquer stressed. "As the United States becomes increasingly unsafe for asylum-seekers, the Canadian government must withdraw from the agreement immediately."

The treaty has withstood legal challenges in Canada, but the global human rights group isn't alone in continuing to call on the Canadian government to ditch the deal. After Trump's inauguration, Jon Milton wrote for the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, a progressive think tank, that the U.S. president had "declared war on migrants."

"The situation is bleak, and Canada has responsibilities—both moral and legal—to act. The first thing it should do is immediately withdraw from the Safe Third Country Agreement with the United States," Milton argued. "If Trump actually does even half the things he has promised to do to migrants in the United States, it will trigger a humanitarian crisis—and Canada has the responsibility to act to protect people fleeing persecution."

While Trump's return to power may impact Canadian immigration policy, most migrants enter the United States at the southern border. Amnesty is pressuring the Mexican government to refuse to participate in any reiteration of the Remain in Mexico policy. Piquer pointed out that the version imposed during Trump's first term "trapped asylum-seekers in camps along the U.S.-Mexico border where they were at serious risk of human rights violations, with thousands of reports of people being assaulted, raped, kidnapped, and extorted."

Already, she said, "the shutdown of the CBP One application has created an insurmountable barrier for approximately 270,000 vulnerable individuals attempting to seek safety in the United States. They are now stranded in Mexico with no clear pathway to protection."

According to Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the app shutdown "triggered a wave of despair and uncertainty." Ramón Márquez, coordinator for the group's Comprehensive Care Center in Mexico City, said that "a patient we treated this week suffered an acute anxiety attack after her previously approved asylum appointment in early February was canceled... Our therapeutic teams are ramping up interventions to support those in emotional crisis."

Adriana Palomares, general coordinator for MSF in Mexico, said last week that "migration and seeking asylum are rights, not crimes. Governments across the region, including the U.S. and Mexico, must urgently implement migration policies that prioritize people and their protection."

Similarly demanding swift action, Piquer said Wednesday that "following the termination of CBP One, the Mexican government must urgently adopt measures to ensure the safety and security of those who had been waiting in Mexico for CPB One appointments, including allowing them to apply for international protection in Mexico and travel freely throughout the country."

"President Trump will only be able to implement his harmful policies if countries in the Americas agree to play along," she emphasized. "Amnesty International urgently calls on the governments of the region to refrain from participating in policies that undermine the rights and dignity of those seeking safety."

Piquer also called on the U.S. government to "respond to this moment of global displacement with funding and policies of welcome, to respond to the crisis with policies that are humane rather than those that hurt." However, such calls seem unlikely to be heard by Trump—who has threatened both Canada and Mexico with tariffs—or the Republican-controlled Congress.

Trump on Wednesday afternoon is set to sign the first bill of his second term—the Laken Riley Act—which congressional Republicans recently passed with help from a dozen Democratic senators and 46 Democrats in the House of Representatives. The legislation will expand mandatory federal detention of undocumented immigrants who are accused of even relatively minor crimes.

That includes locking up "undocumented children who have never been charged with or convicted of a crime," Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) noted after voting against the bill. "We've seen time and again the damage the federal government can cause our children with dangerous immigration policies like this."