A neighbor has a Metris, so I took a measuring tape over. The design is impressively functional, with a floor lower than my Sienna (by about 60 mm or over 2 inches), but with the hitch receiver built into the bumper so it is much higher than my Sienna's (which is under the bumper).
Still, the result is that the bottom edge of the Metris hatch is (with the van relatively lightly loaded) about 47 cm or under 19" from the ground. That's at or even under the height of the top of the ball to tow an Escape 19' (reported in earlier discussions as from 19" to 21"), and the coupler stands taller than that. It's going to be tight, even with the jack out of the way.
Further back, the propane tanks are very far forward on an Escape to allow room for the optional cargo box between them and the trailer body. The Metris hatch is long (due to the tall interior space of the van) and starts vertical (due to the functional vertical back of the van body), so it swings up in a broad arc, and that's why clearance to tanks needs to be checked, too. The solution of moving the tanks back makes sense and would be easy. A small and low (lower than the tanks) cargo box could be added on the forward part of the tongue for some of the little stuff that people like to keep in outside storage, such as chocks or blocks for jacks.
An extended tongue on the trailer would fix all of this, but again, it's not trivial.