The Deadly Impact of Migration Deterrence on the Border

The situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is getting chaotic and dangerous as Title 42 is coming to an end on May 11, 2023. At fault is not the migrants,  but the U.S. and Mexican governments that have not come up with a humanitarian solution to the plight of these migrants. Their response has been to deter migrants from gathering at the border. Point in case, President Biden has ordered 1500 troops to mobilize to the southern border.

On March 28, 2023, forty migrants lost their lives in a Mexican detention center in Cuidad Juárez after setting their mattresses on fire in a desperate call for human dignity. Instead, they were left to die in their cells while the guards fled the scene. Who really ignited this fire? What forces colluded to criminalize, imprison, and kill these migrants? Just two months before, those same migrants would likely have attempted to cross the Rio Grande to turn themselves over to U.S. Border Patrol officers seeking to claim their internationally recognized human right to apply for asylum – a right first recognized in the cataclysmic aftermath of WWI, then again after WWII in the shadow of the Holocaust and reaffirmed by the United States Government with the Refugee Act of 1980.

In this panel, on May 11, 2023 at 10 a.m. Pacific, Noon Central, we will hear from people working on the front lines in Mexican border cities and towns, where thousands of migrants are being detained through the Mexican State’s ongoing complicity in aiding and abetting U.S. deterrence strategies. We will learn how Biden’s recent “Transit Ban,” a resurrection of Trump’s previous policies, is reverberating through Mexican detention centers and shelters. We will speak with participants in a growing movement to contest and intervene in these deadly policies and to prevent more migrant deaths.

The Zooming to the Border for Human Rights Coalition will be holding a webinar, details below.

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