International Mayan League 1201 K St. NW Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: (202) 827-6673 Email: info@mayanleague.org www.mayanleague.org
For Immediate Release July 1, 2022 Media Contact: Lorena Brady International Mayan League info@mayanleague.org THE INTERNATIONAL MAYAN LEAGUE WELCOMES THE SCOTUS RULING ON MPP Piscataway Nation Territory (Washington, D.C.): The International Mayan League welcomes the SCOTUS Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) ruling. While we celebrate this victory, MPP also known as “Remain in Mexico,” has always been in violation of United States (U.S.) domestic and international asylum law and should never have been a policy. Since 2019, we have denounced MPP along with Title 42, and the Zero Tolerance Policy, which all disproportionately impact Black and Indigenous Peoples. The decision to end MPP is overdue, and we demand justice for the harm done to 70K+ innocent people and families exercising their right to seek asylum affected by this policy. The Biden Administration must immediately take the necessary legal actions to permanently end MPP. As we have stated for years, Indigenous peoples, an already vulnerable group forced to await asylum in Mexico, have faced heightened risk for and experienced sexual abuse, kidnapping, extortion, trafficking, and death. What justice will they have? We stress that the full scope of the grave human rights violations experienced by Indigenous Peoples under MPP is not understood because it has not been adequately documented. Due to the misclassification of Indigenous Peoples in the entire immigration system as Latino, Hispanic or simply Guatemalan, the actual numbers of Indigenous peoples affected by MPP is not known. Indigenous peoples cannot communicate their fear of persecution or their fear to return to Mexico because most are monolingual and speak their native language. Due process and justice cannot be achieved for Indigenous Peoples if we are denied our right to exist. For Indigenous peoples, root drivers of our forced migration are intrinsically linked to more than 500 years of colonization, racism and discrimination. Dispossession of our ancestral lands, the persecution of community leaders, and the invasion by transnational corporations destroying our mother earth force us to flee. MPP, Title 42, and family separation are the face of this colonial legacy where our peoples are exposed to corrupt systems in Mexico and the U.S. We will continue to advocate for the Administration to work with Indigenous peoples to address the existing flaws within the U.S. immigration system that deny our basic right to identify as an Indigenous person, speak our primary language, and in turn due process. We call for the Administration to: (A) Implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the American Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the minimum standard in all immigration policies and programs to ensure the respect of Indigenous peoples’ human rights; (B) Immediately end Title 42 which remains in effect and has the same detrimental impacts as MPP; and (C) Ensure that the Root Causes Strategy respects Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty and right of self-determination. At no time should business be done at the expense of human rights. The Supreme Court has made the correct decision on MPP, while other decisions demonstrate the United States’ continued denial of the human rights for Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ+, women and people of color. Human rights, environmental protection, Tribal sovereignty, and autonomy were attacked and will have detrimental consequences for generations to come. Racism and discrimination are inherently ingrained in these existing mechanism that perpetrate the interest of a few. Infringement on the rights of one is an attack on all. The fight for equality, justice, human and environmental rights is not over.