5/3/2019 – The Washington Post
By
EL PASO — While a federal appeals court weighs the Trump administration’s policy of sending asylum seekers back to Mexico to await court hearings in the United States, the government appears to be ignoring its own protocols for who it should send back across the border.
The guidelines for the Migrant Protection Protocols program — also known as Remain in Mexico — preclude government officials from sending people with “known physical/mental health issues” back to Mexico. But at least two pregnant women and a Honduran family that includes a 4-year-old girl with a neurological disorder were sent from El Paso to Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, under the MPP program, according to court proceedings in recent weeks. It is difficult for the girl to take in food, she is nonverbal and unable to walk, and her family argues that waiting in Mexico was a dangerous proposition.
The girl’s mother told Border Patrol agents about her condition, and she said they were unsympathetic: “They told me that if I knew that she was this way, why did I even come?” she said in an interview.
