America’s asylum system is broken. Here’s how Biden could fix it.

As a medical resident, I have spent the past year treating the victims of U.S. border policies on both sides of the frontier. I co-founded and run Clínica Hope, a clinic in Juárez, Mexico, where my patients include migrants who have been turned back from the U.S. border and forced to wait in Mexico.

Asylum Medicine

Due to global events in recent years, applications for political asylum have increased, although the number of people granted asylum in the United States and elsewhere has declined. Physicians and other health care professionals can play a crucial role in the evaluation of individuals seeking asylum, since appropriately documented objective clinical evidence of torture and other forms of persecution can increase the likelihood that survivors of human rights abuses obtain asylum. Many clinicians have the requisite expertise and skills needed to conduct forensic asylum evaluations.

Asylum Medicine: A Call to Respond

Today, there are even more people seeking asylum in the United States and elsewhere than there were when I first began conducting asylum evaluations. Worldwide conflict and violence have driven global displacement to record numbers. In the United States, applications for political asylum have increased while the number of people granted asylum has decreased. The United States hosts far fewer asylum seekers and refugees than many other countries, including much poorer nations.

Before Obtaining Asylum, Refugees Must Show The Scars Behind The Stories

Like most medical professionals, it's Dr. Katherine McKenzie's job to evaluate the wounds and scars of the patients who come to her. But unlike most, it's not her job to treat them. For the past decade, she has worked to verify claims of physical torture by refugees seeking asylum in the U.S.

Forensic medical examinations are key to helping asylum seekers prove trauma

Her husband’s punches had led to multiple miscarriages, and his frequent and severe blows to her head and face left her with dizzying headaches and blurred vision. But because her husband was deeply entangled with local law enforcement, Ms. A. fled because she had no legal or societal protection in her country of origin.

From Seeking Asylum to Studying Medicine

Nine years ago, my family and I fled war in Sri Lanka. We travelled to Australia by boat and spent months living in detention centres before settling in Brisbane, where I finished my high-school education with dreams of attending university. However, despite having the grades and achieving both dux and captain of my school, I did not know whether I would have the opportunity to go to university. Not because I didn't want to-I had dreamed of being a doctor from the age of five-but because asylum seekers are classed as 'international full-fee paying students', which meant I would not have access to student loans and would have to pay my fees upfront.

Life on the U.S. asylum waitlist: a long and dangerous wait

Photographer John Stanmeyer spent eight days in Reynosa, Mexico chronicling the experiences of international asylum seekers waiting for their numbers to be called.

Medical Clinics That Treat Refugees Help Determine The Case For Asylum

The doctors listen to the patients' stories. They search for signs of trauma. They scrutinize injuries, including electrocution scars, bullet wounds and unset broken bones.

More Doctors Needed In The Field Of Asylum Medicine, Says Yale Physician

The work is difficult. We might see someone as she recounts some of the most traumatic episodes of her life. We might have experienced vicarious trauma, but many times we experience vicarious resilience as we see what these asylum seekers have gone through and how they have emerged.

Proving Torture, to Help Win Asylum

A MAN from Mauritania sat stone-faced, cradling his head, which bore a scar that marked the spot where his master had gouged him with a piece of firewood, he told the doctor. A Congolese businessman showed a deformed knee that, to the doctor’s trained eye, indicated a forced fracture. And a man from Southeast Asia was sure that a mark on his lower torso was evidence of a beating with a bat, though a medical examination showed that it was a sign of a fungal infection.