46 Jacqueline Bhabha At the same time as it is forcing vulnerable humanitarian migrants seeking protection back into Mexico, the US government is also severely rationing the rate at which US border officials accept asylum applications, a process referred to as “metering.” This intentional rationing of an urgent humanitarian service exacerbates delay and fuels the sense of “crisis.” Predictably, demand for asylum processing increasingly outstrips the ever more limited supply of officials charged with asylum processing responsibility. Meanwhile, those asylum seekers who understandably try to circumvent this dramatic bottleneck by attempting to enter between official entry points and apply for asylum thereafter are subject to prosecution for illegal entry, the hard edge of the “zero tolerance” policy. In short, damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. The well-established international norm protecting access to asylum irrespective of the manner of entry on the territory, clearly codified in the 1951 Refugee Convention, has been eliminated. It remains to be seen whether this frontal attack on established humanitarian law and principle will be upheld by the courts, but while it is in operation, it further undermines the access to protection for non-citizen children fleeing Central American violence. It is not just Mexico’s northern border that is affected. Under threat of crippling economic sanctions, the Trump administration has pressured Mexico to block refugee entry at its southern border by deploying, for the first time ever, its national guard forces. As of June 2019, Mexico had sent 15,000 untrained soldiers to police the border. In June 2019 alone, more than 30,000 Central Americans, including unaccompanied children, were detained in this way, which has led to overcrowding at 300 percent overcapacity in some Mexican detention centers.44 The Mexican government is now planning to close down these facilities, presumably by emulating US conduct and sending asylum seekers back across the border into Guatemala.45 Children fleeing gangs and other forms of violence now face much more costly and dangerous smuggling strategies to secure safety. A third externalization measure is probably the most devastating to Central American children’s chances of securing safety abroad.46 Adopting Europe’s “safe third country” approach that forces asylum seekers to apply for protection in the first safe country they enter, even if they have family or other ties elsewhere, the Trump M. Meyer and A. Isacson, The “Wall” Before the Wall: Mexico’s Crackdown on Migration at Its Southern Border (Washington, DC: WOLA, 2019), www.wola.org/analysis/mexico-southernborder-report/. 45 J. Valencia, “Mexico Closes 5 Immigrant Detention Centers,” Arizona Public Media, March 7, 2019, https://news.azpm.org/p/news-topical-border/2019/3/7/147445-mexico-closes-5-immigrantdetention-centers/. 46 Z. Kanno-Youngs, “Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump Administration’s Asylum Rule,” New York Times, July 1, 2020, www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/us/politics/trump-asylum-rulingimmigration.html. 44 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108914994 Published online by Cambridge University Press