TRUMP SENDING MIGRANT FROM OTHER COUNTRIES TO MEXICO

Children from Central America are being sent across the border to Mexico, where they may not have any family. An internal email said the transfers violated the government’s own policies, Caitlin Dickerson reported for the New York Times.

US agents have been expelling migrant children from other countries into Mexico, violating a diplomatic agreement with Mexico and testing the limits of US immigration and child welfare laws as well as international covenants on the rights of a child.

The expulsions, laid out in a sharply critical internal email from a senior Border Patrol official, have taken place under an aggressive border closure policy the Trump administration has said is necessary to prevent the coronavirus from spreading into the US. Trump himself contracted the COVID-19 virus.

But they conflict with the terms upon which the Mexican government agreed to help implement the order, which were that only Mexican children and others who had adult supervision could be pushed back into Mexico after attempting to cross the border. An earlier version of this article implied, based on information provided by the Women's Refugee Commission, that more than 200 children from other countries who had been expelled by U.S. border officials to Mexico were not accompanied by a parent or other adult. The Mexican government has not specified how many of the expelled children were unaccompanied.