New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker says the process for seeking asylum “is a crisis that demands an urgent answer,” a message he tweeted after personally escorting five women over the international bridge into a U.S. shelter.
The Democratic presidential candidate was in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, with attorneys from Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center and organizers with the group Families Belong Together to meet with the migrants and assist in their crossing.
He later shared some of their harrowing stories on social media, calling them "profoundly alarming" and warning that their "very human dignity is under assault, and it’s being done in our name."
“One of the women — I can’t share her name out of concern for her safety — had to leave her home under threat of rape,” he said. “Like thousands of others, under the Trump Administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols, she is stuck in limbo in Mexico. She was so hungry while in detention that she said they would eat the peel of the orange.”
Another woman, said Booker, “has bruises all over her back from sleeping on the hard floor of the detention center. She wasn’t able to shower for over 20 days and has rashes on her skin from the lack of sanitation. While in the detention center, she became sick. Despite the fact that the doctor wanted her to go to the hospital, border patrol refused. She was put in isolation and thought she would die.”
Booker’s visit came a day after he released a broad immigration plan that would “virtually eliminate immigration detention” by phasing out the use of private detention centers and using alternatives to detention.
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