Petition to President Biden 
Re: Restore Our Asylum System—Halt Expulsions of People Fleeing Violence!

Dear President Biden,

We are grateful that you have stood by your commitment to temporarily halt deportations and suspend the policy forcing those fleeing danger to remain in Mexico on your first day in office. We now ask you to stop expelling people arriving at our border and begin humanely processing asylum seekers once and for all. Thousands of asylum seekers have been waiting for too long for their chance to make their asylum claim heard in the United States. Families and children are still living in makeshift tents in dangerous cities in Mexico, unable to walk down the street for fear of kidnapping, extortion, or worse. We must welcome families, men, women, and children fleeing violence with dignity and open arms, not lock them up in jails or return them to danger. To fully restore asylum we must stop expulsions from our border. All deportation flights, including those from the border, must be halted. It is time to stop the needless suffering and build a more humane system.

Background:

Thousands of asylum seekers waiting in Mexico are now waiting to hear how they will be processed into the United States. More are on illegal waitlists and others were sent back to countries like Guatemala under unlawful “safe third country agreements” that have not yet been rescinded. Under the Title 42 CDC border order the Trump Administration weaponized the pandemic by closing the border, full stop, to asylum seekers, expelling them to Mexico and putting them on flights to countries in Latin America and the Caribbean still reeling from the pandemic. Deportations from inside the United States have been temporarily halted, even though a Texas judge is trying to stop that from happening, but we are concerned that people are still being expelled from the border and flown back to danger in their home countries without any chance to seek protection because the Title 42 order is still in place. It must be rescinded now.