LOS ANGELES – Thousands of families have moved toward the southwestern border of the United States in recent weeks, driven by expectations for a more friendly welcome from the Biden government and a change in Mexican policy that makes it more difficult for the US to expel some migrants, officials and aid groups say.
The influx represents the first major test of President Joe Biden’s promise to adopt a more compassionate policy along the United States’ border with Mexico.
Defense organizations across the United States predicted that Biden’s election would motivate people to head north again. In the past few weeks, these organizations have been calling for Zoom to strategize on how to handle the flow.
But the peak is coming sooner than expected.
Biden said before taking office that he would not immediately open the border, hoping to avoid a wave of migration. On Tuesday, he signed an executive order that directed a complete overhaul of the asylum process, but government officials said the changes would take time.
Unfortunately, there are thousands of people and families waiting at the border, said Vedant Patel, assistant press secretary for the White House. Fully repairing the situation “will take time and will require a full government approach,” he said.
In the past few days, more than 1,000 people who were detained after crossing into the U.S. have been released into the country in a reversal of the near-border closure by the Trump administration. Many more people are gathering on the Mexican side, setting a test for the United States’ ability and willingness to admit migrants during a pandemic.
On Thursday, in Mexicali, in front of Calexico, California, migrants were seen trying to climb a border fence. A migrant camp in Matamoros, Mexico, across a Texas bridge, has grown to 1,000 people in recent weeks.
“There has been a significant increase in the arrival of asylum seekers and we know that the numbers will only continue to increase,” said Kate Clark, senior director of immigration services for the San Diego Jewish Family Service, which provides assistance to families with clothing and items personal hygiene and help them organize trips.
To protect against the coronavirus, health officials in San Diego provided accommodation for hundreds of migrants arriving in a skyscraper in the center of the city, where they are being quarantined before they can join relatives or friends inside United States.
The Jewish Family Service, which is helping families in quarantines at hotels in San Diego, said the Border Patrol released 140 migrants to the non-profit organization in January, compared with 54 in December. During the first five days of February, the number exceeded 200.
“This is the biggest movement in a long time,” said Clark. “We are working non-stop to keep up.”
‘NO HONEYMOON’
The new influx will put pressure on immigration courts that are already under control due to the backlog of asylum cases.
And advocates of more restrictive immigration policies say that migrants who lose their lawsuits can go underground and remain in the country illegally, adding to the nearly 10 million people who already live in the United States without legal permission.
“It was predictable that there would be virtually no honeymoon for the Biden government in the multiple crises that are displacing people in the North Triangle states of Central America [Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador] and elsewhere, “said Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, a non-partisan study group.
Last year, two hurricanes destroyed livelihoods and homes in Guatemala and Honduras, the pandemic devastated economies across Latin America, and continued gang control in many communities in that part of the world continues to inspire residents to flee.
“The Biden government should receive credit for its commitment to dealing with the conditions of uprooting Central Americans,” said Kerwin, “but this will be a very long-term process and in the meantime, people have been forced to flee.”
Before former President Donald Trump took office, it was an old practice to allow people facing persecution in their home countries to enter the United States and file asylum applications. Some of them were detained until their cases were decided, while others were released.
But in 2019, the Trump administration demanded that applicants wait in Mexico until their U.S. asylum applications were approved or denied. Last March, the government invoked an emergency health law to effectively close the border during the pandemic, except for citizens and legal residents of the United States. Those who tried to cross were summarily expelled back to Mexico.
But Mexico in recent days began implementing a law passed in November that prohibits the custody of children under the age of 12 in government custody. As a result, it stopped accepting Central American families with young children back in Mexico, at least along some stretches of the Texas border, forcing the United States to keep them.
To avoid keeping large numbers of people in shelters or immigration detention centers during a health crisis, the United States Border Patrol has released some of them to join relatives and friends in the United States. At least 1,000 migrants have been allowed to enter Texas in the past few days, border activists said, although the Border Patrol has not released any official estimates.
It is unclear to what extent the new Mexican law on migrant children applies outside the expulsions from Texas, where Mexicans are applying it. But hundreds of migrants were also released after crossing near the border in San Ysidro, California, activists say, and the need to avoid congestion at border facilities during the pandemic is likely to be a factor as well.
Health officials in San Diego have decided that people entering California must initially stay in the quarantined hotel for 10 days before being allowed to continue. There is no similar quarantine requirement in Texas.
CAMP CONFUSION
News of Mexican law sowed widespread confusion, with many migrants mistakenly believing that the law, along with the change of administration, means that the United States will now allow anyone to cross.
Mother Isabel Turcios, a nun in Piedras Negras, Mexico, a small town in front of Eagle Pass, Texas, described a chaotic situation with migrants arriving by the dozens of trains every day and staying on the corners and in abandoned houses, hoping for a chance to cross to the USA
“There are many, many mothers with children coming,” she said. “They think they will be allowed to pass because there is a new president. Some are succeeding, not all.”
At the migrant camp in Matamoros, “every day, when we return to the camp, there are new families,” said Andrea Leiner of Global Response Management, who runs two clinics.
The Border Patrol released 47 families on Tuesday in Kingsville, Texas, and then notified a defense group in Houston that the migrants would be in need of help.
Despite the Trump administration’s repression, there was an increase in seizures in fiscal 2019, rising to 850,000 on the southwest border. Prisons plummeted in fiscal year 2020 due to movement restrictions related to the pandemic. However, more than 70,000 migrants and asylum seekers were arrested along the border in December, the last full month of the Trump administration.
TERMS OF BUSINESS OF THIRD COUNTRIES
Meanwhile, Guatemala said the United States government is ending an agreement that sends asylum seekers who have reached the United States’ borders back to the Central American country with the opportunity to seek protection there.
The Guatemalan government said in a statement on Friday that it welcomed the decision to end the agreement, known as a safe third country agreement.
“The Guatemalan government welcomes President Joe Biden’s statements about his government’s commitment to our country and the region,” the statement said.
In December, only 20 of the 939 Hondurans and El Salvadorans who were rejected from the United States and flew to Guatemala decided to seek asylum there, and none of them obtained final approval.
Similar agreements have been reached between the United States and El Salvador and Honduras. It was unclear if they were also ending. Biden’s team had previously said that he would work quickly to undo these deals.
Flights to Guatemala started in late 2019 and were stopped when the coronavirus attacked.
Ursula Roldan, director of research at Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala, said the deals have long been seen as illegitimate and have in some cases been signed with corrupt governments under the implied assumption that the US would in turn ignore the allegations of corruption.
“What President Biden is doing is restoring the asylum and asylum system, it is equivalent to once again providing transparency and clarity on these issues, and clarity in negotiations with other countries on immigration and asylum,” said Roldan.
The information for this article was provided by Miriam Jordan and Max Rivlin-Nadler of The New York Times; and by Sonia Perez D. of The Associated Press.