A Humanitarian Crisis of Our Own Making

As a result of a Trump administration policy forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while the U.S. considers their cases, tens of thousands of people are stranded in squalid and dangerous conditions on the other side of the southern border. Scores of people who are fleeing persecution have been kidnapped, extorted, and sexually abused at the hands of cartels and criminal gangs. Shelters are overwhelmed, and many asylum seekers are homeless. Ashoka Mukpo, a journalist working at the ACLU, recounts what he saw on a recent visit to the border. And Astrid Dominguez, director of the ACLU’s Border Rights Center, discusses the broader fight for immigrants rights.