Point of No Entry
SAN DIEGO IMMIGRATION COURT, COURTROOM #2 Judge Lee O’Connor has been in his courtroom for all of two minutes before a look of annoyance washes over his face.
Eleven children and six adults—all from Central America, all in immigration court for the first time—sit on the wooden benches before him. They’ve been awake since well before dawn so they could line up at the US-Mexico border to board buses to downtown San Diego, bulletproof-vested federal agents by their side. Like the dozens of families jam-packed in the lobby and six other courtrooms in this building, they’ve been waiting out their asylum cases in Mexico, as required by the Trump administration’s controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), also known as “Remain in Mexico.”
“The whole thing
