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REFOULEMENT AS PANDEMIC POLICY
Washington International Law Journal ; 31(2):185-212, 2022.
Article in English | ProQuest Central | ID: covidwho-2026981
ABSTRACT
A year and a half into a near-total shutdown of the United States border to asylum seekers, United States Border Patrol agents were recorded riding on horseback, swinging whips in the faces of Haitian refugees, and beating them back across the border into Mexico from Del Rio, Texas.1 The refugees were fleeing political instability and forced displacement-in July of 2021, Haitian President Jovenel Moise was assassinated,2 and a month later, a devastating earthquake killed thousands of people and destroyed 53,000 homes.3 Upon arriving in the United States, instead of being granted temporary refuge, the asylum seekers were forced to live in encampments along the United StatesMexico border, waiting and hoping for an opportunity to make their case for asylum-an opportunity that would never come.4 Many of them were expelled from the United States en masse before they were ever able to ask for asylum, and thousands more were left in limbo in Mexico.5 During this humanitarian crisis, Department of Homeland Security ("DHS") Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a warning to Haitians "If you come to the United States illegally, you will be returned. A. COVID, Border Closures, and Impact on Asylum Seekers On December 31, 2019, China reported the first cases of what would soon be recognized as the novel coronavirus COVID-19.8 On January 21, 2020, the United States Centers for Disease Control ("CDC") confirmed the first United States COVID case, which originated from a person who had traveled to Washington state from Wuhan, China.9 In early February, the United States and other countries formally imposed global air travel and quarantine restrictions.10 On March 11, the World Health Organization ("WHO") officially declared COVID-19 to be a global pandemic, and by midMarch 2020, U.S. states and localities began widely issuing stay-at-home orders to slow the spread of the disease.11 Across the globe, nations closed their borders to human migration and movement. A Pew Research Report found that, by April of 2020, 91% of the world's population was living in a country with some sort of COVID travel restriction.12 Canada closed its borders to foreign tourism.13 The European Union restricted incoming nonessential travel14 and many member states banned entry from countries with high rates of COVID infection, such as India.15 The United States banned entry for non-essential travelers from the European Union and the United Kingdom.16 The most devastating consequences of border closures, though, have been for asylum seekers and refugees. At the height of the pandemic, at least 168 nations had closed or restricted their borders and around 90 countries had closed their borders to those seeking asylum.17 Simultaneously, COVID-19 served as a "threat multiplier," compounding the effects of poverty, lack of healthcare, and violence affecting refugees and displaced people.18 There were 82.4 million forcibly displaced people in the world at the end of 2020, the highest number ever recorded,19 but fewer refugees were resettled in 2020 than any year in the previous two decades.20 The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ("UNHCR") estimated that about 1.5 million refugees and asylum seekers were unable to seek international protection because they were stranded by these border closures in 2020.21 Border closures are particularly harmful to asylum seekers, who rely on the ability to cross borders to seek safety and refuge.22 Asylum seekers, by definition, have been displaced from their homes, and they rely on access to territory outside of their country of origin to seek protection from persecution.
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Collection: Databases of international organizations Database: ProQuest Central Language: English Journal: Washington International Law Journal Year: 2022 Document Type: Article

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Collection: Databases of international organizations Database: ProQuest Central Language: English Journal: Washington International Law Journal Year: 2022 Document Type: Article