WASHINGTON – As thousands of Honduran migrants are heading to the border with the United States, the new Biden government, just days from its inauguration, has a message: Don’t come now.
President-elect Joe Biden promised an end to the Trump administration’s strict immigration policies, which focused on building a border wall and restricting asylum eligibility.
But these promises can be tested in the early days of the new government. If candidates for Central American emigrants realize that now is the time to travel to the United States, the southern border can be quickly overwhelmed before systems are put in place to deal with the influx.
A senior official on the Biden transition team said the perception that the Biden administration will be able to allow all incoming asylum seekers to enter the United States to make their application on the first day is false.
“The situation at the border is not going to change overnight,” the transition official told NBC News in an exclusive interview.
But the official declined to say when asylum seekers will be able to come to the United States and whether they will be detained pending a court hearing.
It is estimated that 9,000 Honduran migrants are fleeing regions with food shortages, devastated by two hurricanes, droughts and economic difficulties. On Friday night, some 2,000 members of the caravan passed through Guatemalan authorities and entered Guatemala without showing documentation or negative views of COVID, the Associated Press reported. The caravan could reach the border with the United States in the coming weeks.
While some may be spurred on by promises of an easier way to the United States, in the past there have been increases in immigration around US elections and power transitions. There was an increase in migration in late 2016 and early 2017, just before Trump took office, and caravans from Central America arrived in southern California in 2018, close to the midterm elections.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller, the government’s immigration hawk, told reporters shortly before the 2020 elections that Biden’s immigration policies would result in “open borders” and the end of America as a “sovereign nation” .
Before the recent caravan, there were already tens of thousands of migrants who were detained at the U.S. border by the Trump administration and told to wait in Mexico until the date of the trial to present their asylum cases. Many have given up and returned to the south, but thousands remain in poor condition in northern Mexico waiting to enter the U.S.
Biden’s senior transition officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that those waiting at the border, along with other vulnerable populations, will be a priority for processing and entry, rather than those who have recently arrived.
The official said that migrants trying to enter the United States to apply for asylum in the first weeks of the new government “need to understand that they will not be able to enter the United States immediately”.
The official also emphasized that any immigration legislation proposed by the Biden government will be for undocumented immigrants who already live in the United States, not those who are thinking of arriving now.
The Biden government wants to end the Trump administration’s practice of requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, known as the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), but will not allow all migrants to enter the United States at once as soon as Biden entering the office, said the official.
“There is help on the way, but now is not the time to make the trip,” said the official.
The new administration has also pledged to reverse Trump’s restrictions on asylum, which have drastically reduced the number of people eligible for protection.
Over time, the official said, the Biden government plans to devise a way to safely process migrants at the border and allow asylum seekers to make their claims.
The transition officer declined to give details of what migrants traveling in the Honduran caravan will encounter when they reach the U.S. border under the Biden government, in part because they hope to receive more information about the processing capabilities of US migrants after Biden take office on Wednesday.
But the official said the people in the caravan “will not find out when they reach the border with the United States that from Tuesday to Wednesday things have changed overnight and the ports are all open and they can enter the United States.”
At the same time, Covid-19 rates are increasing in the US and around the world. The official said that the pandemic, in addition to the time it will take the Biden government to restart processing migrants and asylum seekers on the southern border, now makes it an especially difficult period to travel.
“We have to send a message that health and hope are on the way, but coming now doesn’t make sense for your own safety … as long as we implement processes that they can access in the future,” said the official.
