Like tens of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in the United States, Valquiria de Faria Teixeira and her 8-year-old son arrived at a border town in Texas and made their claims.Then, an already bad situation got much worse.De Faria Teixeira was separated from her son, Abel, and thrown into detention, where she has languished for the past 11 months as she fights a legal battle to end her “unduly prolonged, unjustified and punitive” incarceration.“They came here for safety, but they were arrested and treated like criminals,” said their lawyer Eduardo Beckett in a telephone interview from Texas.Although the pair followed the proper legal channels and requested asylum at an official port of item last March, they were immediately held at the El Paso Service Processing Center and the next day border officials took Abel away from his mother, Beckett said.Abel was detained for two weeks at a children’s facility in El Paso before he was picked up by his dad, who had previously fled their home in Brazil and now lives in Boston with Abel’s older siblings.De Faria Teixeira, 39, who claims to have fled drug traffickers and corrupt officials in Sao Sebastiao do Anta, in southeastern Brazil, was among hundreds of migrants who met with an Amnesty International delegation on a recent mission to investigate the impact of U.S. President Donald Trump’s policy on asylum seekers and migrants travelling to the U.S.-Mexico border.The key conclusion the delegation came away with is that the U.S. is not a safe country for asylum seekers and Canada must withdraw from the Safe Third Country Agreement that restricts refugees to seeking asylum in the country they initially arrive, whether it is Canada or the U.S.“At every turn during our visit along the border, I heard of cruel human rights violations against refugees and migrants at the hands of U.S. officials,” Alex Neve, secretary general of Amnesty International Canada, told the Sta ...
|
