Abstract

NINO VEGA, Nohora Constanza. Asylum in Dispute: Violent Restraint Strategies During the Donald Trump Administration.Translated byLuis Cejudo-Espinosa. Frontera norte [online]. 2022, vol.34, e2277.  Epub Feb 10, 2023. ISSN 2594-0260.  https://doi.org/10.33679/rfn.v1i1.2277.

This paper identifies the Trump administration’s violent practices toward Central American and Mexican asylum-seeking families as a defensive response to the legal framework that grants them this protection tool in their relationship with the State. Through in-depth interviews and participant observation with migrant families in Tijuana during 2017-2020, it is concluded that the various measures implemented sought to limit asylum as a right and to configure an illegal subject based on suspicion, criminalization, and trauma. In this way, it was sought to reverse the character of legality that protects asylum seekers and rebuild a dominant vertical relationship of racialized subjection. The analysis seeks to contribute to migration studies by understanding the tension between the legality of asylum and the Trump administration’s actions to disrupt this framework.

Keywords : asylum; illegality; issue; Central America; Mexico.

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