Migrant advocates: Deported Hondurans denied asylum rights

A Honduran mother and her two kids, who had been living in Vermont after fleeing threats to their lives, were deported last week after being detained by immigration authorities in St. Albans. Now, activists and legal experts say Greisy Mejia and her children were denied their rights and that officials violated immigration procedure.

“I cried, begging them to just send me back, to let my children stay in Vermont where it’s safe,” said Mejia in a translated statement released by advocacy group Migrant Justice, which has been working on her case with attorney Brett Stokes, director of the Center for Justice Reform Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School.

“I can’t stand this nightmare anymore,” she added later in the message. “I want to turn myself over to the people that want to kill my family just so that they’ll let my children be happy and free.”

The 29-year-old woman, along with her 9-year-old daughter and infant son, had twice fled violence in Honduras and, on their second attempt, crossed the southern border this February while avoiding border agents, according to her advocates. After entering the States, she and her kids were kidnapped, abused and held for several thousand dollars in ransom for weeks, her supporters said.

The family eventually reached police in southern Texas — where she was arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents on March 26. But authorities released Mejia to Vermont a few days later with an ankle tracker after she described her kidnapping and told them she had connections in the state, according to Stokes.

In Vermont, Mejia was in touch with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement while Migrant Justice set her up with legal counsel, said Rachel Elliot, a spokesperson for the activist group. (Elliot was previously a student journalist with Community News Service.) Mejia was working with her legal team to file for asylum and apply for a T visa, a type of visa available to victims of human trafficking, said Elliot.

Elliot said Mejia was set for a routine check-in with ICE personnel at the enforcement and removal operations office in St. Albans at the end of July. But then the office asked her to come in early on July 9.

“They said that it would be a totally normal check-in,” said Elliot, adding the officials implied they would take her ankle bracelet off.

A member of Mejia’s legal team accompanied her because the situation seemed abnormal, said Stokes.

But it wasn’t a normal check-in.

ICE detained Mejia and her kids in the building for six hours that day, said Elliot.

Her lawyers tried to file a stay of removal, a formal request to keep Mejia in the U.S. while she awaited her visa, Stokes said. People usually file stays of removal for humanitarian reasons, he said.

But ICE said the request would have to be filed in person at regional headquarters in Boston, over 200 miles by car from St. Albans, the lawyer said. A Migrant Justice volunteer had started driving down to do so when they found out Mejia and her kids had already been taken away, said Stokes.

“ICE failed the family,” said Elliot, characterizing the treatment of Mejia’s family as “dehumanizing” and her experience as “incredibly traumatizing.”

A spokesperson for Boston enforcement and removal operations, which oversees Vermont, said in a statement: “Non-citizens who are illegally present in the United States are removable from the United States in accordance with U.S. immigration law.”

The statement did not respond to claims that enforcement officers did not follow proper procedure.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security regulations required that Mejia have a meeting with an asylum officer — an opportunity to express the fear for her life in Honduras, said Stokes. He thinks authorities should have given her that interview.

“She never got to meet with a judge, which is also a requirement based on the regulations,” he said.

Community News Service asked ICE if officials intentionally misled the Mejia family about the July 9 meeting and if the paperwork process in Boston was designed to make it harder to file stays of removal. ICE didn’t respond to either question in the statement.

Sarah Sherman-Stokes, associate director of the Boston University Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Clinic, called Mejia’s situation “devastating.”

She said Mejia “sounds like a mom who wanted the best for her family, for her children, and she was struggling to get it. And I hope that she gets that safety, which is what we all want, you know?”

There often is little accountability for routine violations of people’s rights, Sherman-Stokes said.

On July 9, about two dozen people came out for a Migrant Justice rally outside the St. Albans facility.

“We called Greisy’s name, hoping that if she and her children were inside, that they would hear us and know that we were there supporting them and fighting for their release,” Elliot said.

Activists later found out the family had already been transported to another facility by the time they rallied outside.

Mejia, now in Honduras, is still in touch with her lawyer and staff at Migrant Justice. They plan on filing a visa application for her from overseas and hope she can re-enter the U.S. in the future, said Elliot.

“I wake up at 3 a.m. thinking that someone is knocking on the door of the hotel room,” Mejia said in her translated update, which is attached to an online petition that had over 1,100 signatures as of Thursday.

“I hold my children tight and dream of running far from this place, but we have nowhere to go.”

(Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship.)