Abstract
When Rosa crossed the Rio Grande in the summer of 2022, she sat to rest on the U.S. side of the muddy river that serves as the international border with Mexico. After weeks of a trip that took her from her hometown in Cuba to Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and across the length of Mexico, she was physically exhausted and emotionally drained. Instead of a sense of great fear of being discovered by U.S. authorities, she felt a sense of relief upon seeing them, even calling her relatives before the authorities made it to her to let her family know that she had made it to the United States. Minutes later she openly approached U.S. Border Patrol agents and presented herself as a political asylee. Rosa was but one of hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans who have escaped their countries, risking life and limb in a desperate trek to make it across the U.S.-Mexico border in order to seek a better life in the United States under the banner of seeking political asylum in the United States.
Recommended Citation
Ernesto Sagas, Ediberto Roman & Richard T. Middleton,
The End of Asylum: Biden, Trump, and Latin America in Crisis,
70
St. Louis U. L.J.
(2026).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.slu.edu/lj/vol70/iss4/9