Foreign Affairs

Migrants Long Stuck In Mexico Due To Trump Policies Hopeful About Biden’s Presidency

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Migrants long stuck in Mexico as a result of Trump’s stringent immigration policies are reportedly feeling “hopeful” about Joe Biden’s presidency, according to The Guardian.

Thousands of migrants have been stranded at Mexico’s border because of the Trump administration’s migrant protection protocols (MPP), which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their applications are arbitrated in U.S. courts, resulting in the murder, rape and kidnapping of numerous migrants in Mexico, The Guardian reported.

Honduran migrant Selma López, 31, has been trapped in the Piedras Negras region of Mexico with her 11-year old son Darikson and another woman hoping to be granted access to the United States, The Guardian said.

“We’re encouraged and feeling a little hopeful,” López told The Guardian after Biden announced plans to roll back MPP and overhaul U.S. immigration policy through a mixture of legislation and Executive Orders. Although Piedras Negras has been perceived as safe for migrants, asylum seekers are required to attend court hearings in Laredo, Texas which entails a long and perilous journey through 125 miles of drug cartel territory.

Biden has been a vociferous critic of the Trump administration’s immigration stance, once declaring Trump’s “fear-based immigration policies are a stain on our nation” in a tweet.

Donald Trump’s inhumane, fear-based immigration policies are a stain on our nation. We have to get him out of the White House and ensure our laws reflect our values as a nation of immigrants.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) February 16, 2020

“It’s giving us a little hope that we can at least enter the US and fight our cases there,” López said.

“He’s given us 100 days to get to the U.S. and give us ‘legalment’ paper so we can get a better life for our kids and family,” a Honduran migrant trapped at the Guatemalan border in a caravan said in an interview first reported by The Hill. His comments echo the same sentiments felt by López about the incoming Biden administration.

“The cornerstone of MPP is xenophobia. And it worked because 68,000 people were kept out of the US,” Charlene D’Cruz, a border fellow for Lawyers for Good Government’s Project Corazon, told The Guardian.

While Trump’s MPP has been widely criticized as xenophobic and harmful, others have called Biden’s immigration agenda radical, including Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

Cotton lambasted the Democrats as a “party of open borders” offering “total amnesty” to migrants.

Meanwhile in Mexico migrants continue to hope Biden will follow through with his promise of repealing Trump-era immigration policies.

“With Trump, there wasn’t any reason for hope,” said Luis Guerra, a Cuban migrant at the Mexico border in an interview with The Guardian. “We think Biden is going to push an immigration reform.”