Over the past three years, Julie Contreras, an immigration and humanitarian activist from the Waukegan area, has visited the makeshift tent encampments filled with asylum-seekers on the southwestern border that were erected after the Trump administration enacted the “Remain in Mexico” program in 2019.
Contreras said she has witnessed the unsanitary conditions in which they live, often hungry and unwashed. She’s also heard the reports of kidnappings and sexual assaults of women and young girls as they are forced to wait for a hearing of their cases in Mexico under the policy also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which applies to people who left a third country and traveled through Mexico to reach the U.S. border.
“They live in inhumane conditions,” Contreras said. “As Americans, we should be ashamed for letting this happen.”
