Deportation with a Layover.

Of the comprehensively cruel and inhumane immigration policies enacted by the Trump administration, one of the worst was the Asylum Cooperative Agreement (ACA) between the US and Guatemala. Under the terms of this illegal agreement, those Central American refugees seeking legal asylum in the US were subject to rapid deportment to what the US claimed was a ‘safe third country’ to seek asylum there. The policy became commonly known as ‘deportment with a layover’. Guatemala in no way provided “access to a full and fair procedure for determining a claim to asylum or equivalent temporary protection”, the standard a nation must meet to qualify as ‘safe’ under US law. These images were captured at Brownsville International Airport in February 2020, the airport being a hub for such deportations. Every morning, before dawn, charter aircraft were filled to capacity with shackled and handcuffed refugees to deposit them, penniless and terrified, in a country equally as dangerous as the ones they left on their thousands-mile trek to seek asylum in the United States. Pictured here also are the dedicated volunteers of 'Witness at the Border, a group of individuals from all over the country who kept a 24-7 vigil in Brownsville protesting the cruelty of the immigration policies. They would assemble in the darkness to show support with illuminated signs visible to the buses of deportees and in one instance blocked the street to prevent the buses from leaving.