>> tonight, pregnant and in peril, the expectant mother stuck at the border. are you afraid that you give birth here at the camp? seeking refuge and a new life, but caught in a misery made in america. >> most of these women are living on the streets. they don't have access to adequate food, water, medical care. it is deternance by cruelty. crl >> and the government official turned whistle blower. you wouldn't just follow orders. >> i couldn't. >> borderline, pregnant and waiting, "nightline" will be right back.

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>> good evening. thanks for joining us. tonight, we're taking you just a couple hundred yards across the texas border to see the shocking conditions in a camp where vulnerable people, including pregnant women, are waiting for asylum. i've traveled to refugee camps

and shanty towns all over the world, but this one is different, emerging just after the trump administration's new "remain in mexico" mandate took effect. >> reporter: for melissa, cooking a hot meal for her family is a pleasure. >> she's five months pregnant and the cravings are kicking in. >> it's a traditional honduran meal, cooked on a stove made from the mud around them. it reminds her of just how far she is from home.

>> melissa, her husband armando and their 9-year-old daughter, who asked us not to use their real names, say they've had no choice but to spend the last three months living in this squalid camp, a stone's throw from the united states. >> we've been on the ground for more than a year, charting the human toll of a changing immigration system. tonight, we take you inside the asylum debate. with a top trump administration official, a whistleblower, who quit in protest, and those fighting for thousands stuck at the border. in less than a year, changes in immigration policy called --- migrant protection protocols have pushed --- 60,000 asylum seekers to "remain in mexico,"

leaving them vulnerable, often in dangerous areas. this sprawling camp of 1,500 just one of several that have popped up along the southern border. melissa was told that living here was endangering her pregnancy. >> she is one of 18 pregnant women named in a complaint filed by the aclu against the department of homeland security, >> it's particularly dangerous for pregnant women. >> rochelle garza is a lawyer with the aclu >> most of these women are living on the streets. they don't have access to adequate food, water, medical care. >> melissa says back in honduras her husband, armando, was doing well, as a waiter, but when he was beaten and targeted by gangs , they knew they had to run.

>> your lives were threatened? >> si. >> they fled with just a little cash and three duffle bags, and when they arrived on the texas border, they asked for asylum, which is their legal right. in the past, they would've been allowed to stay in the u.s. and wait for their hearing. instead, u.s. immigration officials gave them a court date and sent them back to wait in mexico. >> the biggest loophole drawing illegal aliens to our borders is the use of fraudulent or meritless asylum claims to gain entry into our great country. >> since taking office, the trump administration has tried to slow the number of migrants coming into the u.s. with a series of controversial policies. >> they are limiting artificially the number of people who can cross. >> it's called "metering" and has spawned migrant camps in tijuana, south of san diego. >> last year, we saw the first

impacts of that metering program here in matamoros. with the latest policy change, that once small encampment has ballooned, now housing thousands, spread out along the banks of the rio grande. how long have you been here? >> how did you get here? the river becomes one of the only ways for a mother like belquis to keep her two kids clean. >> pieces of wood and fabric, the only privacy for bathrooms. but for many, the dangers outside the camp haunt the most. tens of thousands have been sent back where they have no choice but to live in these makeshift camps. many are subjected to kidnapping, assault, extortion, even death.

what's happening here is nothing short of a manmade humanitarian crisis. melissa and her family know the dangers intimately. they say they were held for ransom by a mexican cartel for ten days, while crossing north through mexico. >> she says her sister, who lives in ohio, had to negotiate with the kidnappers and eventually wired thousands of dollars to secure their release. >> what precautions have you taken to try to keep your family safe? >> the camps are overrun by the cartels.

they traffic in humans. they're known as the kings of the river. >> are you afraid that you give birth here at the camp? >> just across the river, brownsville native rochelle has spent years practicing immigration law. >> it is deterrence by cruelty. >> i never would have envisioned having to drive to a tent court to assist any client. >> she's on her way to represent one of the pregnant asylum seekers, but her client has gone missing. >> i interviewed her sometime in september but then lost contact. i haven't i haven't been able to locate her for the last at least the last couple of weeks.

>> hoping her client appears, rochelle heads inside to plead her case. behind all that concertina wire is a trump administration experiment. tent courthouses where judges teleconference in from around the country. but in the past these immigration hearings were open to the public. but these facilities are often restricted, even to attorneys. several hours later, rochelle walks out. >> my client wasn't there after all. so we, you know, we made every attempt we could to find her, and i have hopes that maybe she may still be able to make it to this court hearing. >> what was going on in your mind? >> frustration, anger, all of it because -- i mean my hope is to see if we can locate her. i don't know if she's given birth. i don't know if she's dead. i don't know if she's disappeared. i don't know anything about what happened to her. >> the trump administration touts the "remain in mexico"

program as a success, citing the recent decline in unauthorized crossings. as acting deputy secretary at dhs, ken cuccinelli is responsible for u.s. asylum policy >> could you give us the goal of the migrant protection program? >> there's more than one goal. will start with the top one is to quickly adjudicate a large number of claims at the border. that's one. two is to not be releasing people into the interior of the united states. so they remain in mexico. >> but you are sending pregnant women back to a country that your own state department categorizes as a level 4 threat. that is a no go zone for american travelers. so why is it -- >> that is just not correct. >> the advisory is that americans should not travel. >> to certain parts of the country. >> to matamoros, which is precisely where you're sending these pregnant women. we spoke to a pregnant woman. >> no, they can go anywhere in mexico, and these are people who've traveled hundreds, if not thousands of miles to get to our border.

they can go anywhere in mexico with work permits. >> surely you understand that these people have no money, are fleeing for their lives and have nowhere to go and are desperate. they are fleeing persecution and documented cases of danger, credible threats to their lives, and you're placing them back in a place where they have nowhere to go. >> you are presuming they're being placed in a point and they're not. they're allowed to go anywhere in mexico with work or the right to work, which is something they don't get immediately in the united states until their claims are adjudicated. >> after waiting for three months at that matamoras camp, melissa's family is ready for their court date. rochelle once again waiting on the other side. best case scenario, they're parole, and they're allowed to walk through those gates and we can help them on their way.

worst case scenario would be for them to be returned to mexico. when we come back, will melissa and her family be able to make it across? and we hear from a former asylum officer, now speaking out. >> if the goal is to keep everyone who's not white out of the united states, then it's effective. ys. so we built a snow globe. i'll get that later. dylan! but the one thing we could both agree on was getting geico to help with homeowners insurance. what? switching and saving was really easy! i love you! what? sweetie! hands off the glass. ugh!! call geico and see how easy saving on homeowners and condo insurance can be. i love her! introducing a razor that works differently. the gillette skinguard

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forced to "remain in mexico," under a new trump administration policy. melissa's been waiting in this makeshift camp with her husband and 9-year-old daughter for three months. across the rio grande, jodi goodwin is among those fighting for asylum seekers. on this morning, she's trying to win freedom for a venezuelan family. the father was detained and tortured for his political beliefs. good win says before, the case would have sailed through. now she says the family is being stone walled. >> i'm like, what the hell? why can't you guys read your own law, and why can't you actually use some common sense? >> reporter: finally, the family from venezuela wins a rare asylum grant. >> oh, my

oh, my god. >> welcome to the united states. >> thank you, thank you. >> reporter: jodi's clients are the exception to the rule. these are hard cases to win even harder without a lawyer. out of all mpp cases recorded so far, less than three percent had legal counsel. >> what's the point of the overall policy? >> i think the point is, um, to end, uh, asylum in the us. it's a strategy that's rolled out by white nationals that are controlling the immigration agenda in the whitehouse right now. the endgame is to keep brown people out. >> reporter: douglas stevens couldn't agree more. the former asylum officer resigned in protest after the

new "remain in mexico" policy began gnawing at his conscience/ >> did you set out to be a whistleblower? >> i did not. that was never my intent. i kinda knew that by refusing to do this i was marking myself as somebody that wasn't going to blindly follow orders. ultimately, i felt like i could not continue doing this interviews. >> you wouldn't just follow orders. >> i -- i couldn't. >> reporter: an immigration lawyer by training. his job was to listen to horrifying stories and decide peoples' fate. before quitting, he sent a detailed memo -- pointing out why he feels the migrant protection protocols or mpp are both immoral and illegal writing "the mpp both discriminates and penalizes." but his former boss's boss ken cucinnelli couldn't disagree more. >> well, first of all, it's rather blatantly legal. congress gave us the authority and it says explicitly in the statute to have people wait in a contiguous country. that's the language of the statute. >> why would mpp be in violation of -- the international treaty? >> a fundamental part of international law. essentially says that you cannot send someone back to a country

or -- anywhere -- where it's more likely than not that they would be harmed or persecuted. it's a very fundamental, basic rule. >> and that dates back to the holocaust. >> yes, yes it does. >> reporter: there's plenty of danger in these border areas known as the "disappearance capital of mexico" the cartels profit from sex trafficking, smuggling humans. this crisis -- for them-- is a business opportunity. because of extensive drug cartel activity, this area of matamoros is considered by the u.s. state department a level 4 threat, it's as dangerous as north korea or afghanistan. and yet that's exactly where they're sending back vulnerable, pregnant women and children. human rights groups have documented more than 600 incidents of rape, kidnapping, torture and assault in the year since the policy has been in place. >> i know what the country conditions say. they are at extremely high risk of violence --of kidnapping, of

extortion. i know, because i've heard stories from them or from other asylum officers. people are disappearing, also. so i have no doubt that --that that's probably happened to -- to some of the people that i sent back. >> that still haunts you. >> it does. >> reporter: have you been to matamoros? >> no. >> have you been to any of that? >> i've not been into mexico. >> does it ever weigh on you that these people who you give court dates to simply disappear? because you know there's human trafficking. you know there's kidnapping and extortion. >> the stories that weigh on me are, for instance, one of our volunteers encountered a seven year old girl who'd been across the border six times. i worry about that 7 year old girl. i worry about the other children being used in this process. i want to stop this process. and that's what we're trying to do. that's our goal. >> reporter: after months of waiting -- a small victory -- melissa -- who's now six months pregnant -- and her family --

are allowed into the united states where their asylum claim will be heard. as i understand it, what's happening right now is that the mexican government is not accepting pregnant women into the remain in mexico program following their court hearings. >> reporter: they made their way to ohio, relying on the kindness of strangers. >> reporter: her sister has taken them in -- this is day three on american soil. >> what was it like after you reunited with your sister? what was it like to shower and sleep in a bed?

after all those months? >> what's the american dream for you? >> reporter: this is making you emotional, why? >> reporter: we'll be right back. it's how we bring real hope to our cancer patients- like viola. when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her team at ctca created a personalized care plan that treated her cancer and strengthened her spirit. so viola could focus on her future. their future. this is how we inspire hope. this is how we heal. cancer treatment centers of america. appointments available now. cancer treatment centers of america. the ones that make a truebeen difference in people's lives. and mike's won them, which is important right this minute, because if he could beat america's biggest gun lobby,

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