Step.- The US-Mexico border was relatively quiet on Friday, offering little sign of the chaos feared after a surge of migrants eager to cross into the US before the end of coronavirus-related immigration restrictions.
Less than 24 hours after the rules known as Title 42 were lifted, migrants and US authorities were still evaluating the effect of the change and the new regulations adopted by the government of President Joe Biden to stabilize the region.
“We didn’t see any substantial increase in immigration this morning,” said Blas Nunez-Neto of the Department of Homeland Security. He added that the agency did not have specific figures because the situation is just beginning.
Migrants along the border continued to push into the Rio Grande border in their attempt to enter the United States while challenging agents on the other side yelling at them to turn back. Others were trying to access the dating app from their cell phones, a crucial process as part of the new rules. Migrants by appointment crossed a bridge in the hope of a new life. Additionally, through legal demands, they sought to stop at least some of the measures.
The Biden administration has asserted that the new system is designed to crack down on unauthorized crossings and offer a new legal path for immigrants who pay thousands to people smugglers to bring them to the border.
The United States now virtually prohibits immigrants from applying for asylum in the country without first applying online or first seeking protection in the countries through which they traveled. Families allowed to enter as their immigration cases progress will be subject to curfews and GPS monitoring.
In Mexico’s Ciudad Juárez, across the river, many migrants stared at their cell phones in hopes of landing a coveted appointment to get permission to cross. The registration app changed, so some explained to others how to use it.
Nearby, other migrants charged their phones on a light pole to try to get an appointment. Most of them resigned themselves to waiting.
Yeremy Depablos, a 21-year-old Venezuelan traveling with seven cousins, hopes the new measure will speed up appointments. For fear of being deported, she Depablos did not want to cross without legal authorization despite the fact that she has been waiting for a month in Ciudad Juárez.
The legal channels promoted by the US government consist of a program that allows the entry of up to 30,000 people per month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela if they submit an online application, have a financial sponsor and enter by air.
About 100 processing centers are being opened in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere for migrants to apply for permission to enter the United States, Spain or Canada. About 1,000 people can enter daily through land crossings from Mexico, as long as they get an appointment through the app.
If it works, the system will fundamentally alter how migrants arrive at the southern border of the United States, but Biden, who is running for re-election, faces withering criticism from immigrant advocates who say the president is abandoning more humanitarian methods, and from Republicans, who say he is taking a soft stance on border security.
On Friday morning, small groups of Haitian migrants with appointments to request asylum crossed the Gateway International Bridge that connects Matamoros, in Mexico, with Brownsville, in Texas. They did it with the help of a non-governmental organization, getting ahead of the usual traffic of students and workers who lined up on the pedestrian section of the bridge. Vehicular traffic seemed normal.
Melissa Lopez, executive director of diocesan services for migrants and refugees in El Paso, said the streets appeared quiet Friday, with few migrants present.
He stated that, after speaking with some of them, they said they were willing to follow the new path created by the US government, but there was also the fear of deportation and possible criminal penalties for those who cross the border without legal authorization.
The lull came after days when many migrants poured across the border in hopes of getting permission to stay in the United States before Title 42 restrictions expired.
Farther west, hundreds of migrants, mostly families, sat in about 20 rows amid the border walls between San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico, as Border Patrol agents walked among them and selected who would go. would allow them to stand up for prosecution. When some rose with them, those left behind cheered.
Gloria Iñigo, from Peru, said she hoped her family would be next. Íñigo, her husband and two girls, ages 5 and 8, crossed the border on Wednesday before the new rules came into force. She commented that she had heard of the rules and that she wanted to get in earlier, but she was surprised that so many more did the same.
“I have faith,” he said of being able to get asylum in the United States.
The expired rules, known as Title 42, had been in place since March 2020 and allowed border agents to quickly return asylum seekers across the border on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The United States has declared an end to the national emergency, ending the restrictions.
Although Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, which encouraged repeated entry attempts. After Thursday, those who cross illegally face the possibility of being barred from entering the country for up to five years, as well as possible criminal charges.
Border Patrol Chief Raúl Ortiz tweeted Friday that the agency had apprehended 67,759 people in the past week. That averages 9,679 a day, nearly double March’s average daily level of 5,200.
The number is slightly below the 11,000 figure authorities set as the maximum they expected after the end of Title 42, but it was unclear how the numbers peaked in the hours before Title 42 expired on Thursday. at night.
“We are seeing precisely the challenge that we were hoping for,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Friday on ABC television’s “Good Morning America.” “We cannot control the flow of people before they reach our border.”
Holding facilities along the border had far exceeded capacity in the run-up to Title 42 expiration. Agents were under orders to release migrants when holding centers reached 125% capacity or where people were held for an average of 60 hours. Expedited releases, with notifications to report to an immigration office within 60 days, would also have been triggered when authorities detained 7,000 migrants along the border in a single day.
But on Thursday night, US Judge T. Kent Wetherell, appointed by President Donald Trump, thwarted the government’s plan to start releasing people and set a date for the court to determine whether or not to extend the release. decision. The US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it will comply with the ruling, but called it a “damaging finding that will result in unsafe overcrowding.”
Other parts of the US government’s immigration plan also face legal challenges.
Advocacy groups sued the US government over its new asylum rules minutes before they went into effect. His lawsuit alleges that the federal government’s policy is not unlike that adopted by Trump, which was rejected by the same court.
The Biden government indicates that its rule is different and argues that it is not an absolute prohibition but that it imposes a greater burden on the evidence presented to obtain asylum and that it combines restrictions with other newly created legal avenues.
