“AMERICA, WHERE THEY DIDN’T LET ME IN,” 11-year-old Jose wrote in Spanish next to a picture of mountains and trees in blue, green and brown. He also drew a river—the Rio Grande, which separates him from Brownsville, Texas, where his family hopes to claim asylum. “La tierra prometida,” he wrote. “The promised land.”
Jose, who is from Honduras, is one of at least 1,450 migrants living in a tent encampment on the streets of Matamoros, Mexico, as a result of the Trump Administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). Also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, the MPP requires asylum seekers to stay south of the border while their cases work their way through the legal system.
Dozens of children in Matamoros drew their experiences as part of an art project,…