World News | Mysterious New System at Border Keeps Migrants Guessing
Get latest articles and stories on World at LatestLY. After hearing rumours that Central American families with younger children were being allowed into the US, Irma Paz left Honduras with her husband and two kids on a nearly two-month journey to the banks of the Rio Grande.
Brownsville (Texas), Mar 24 (AP) After hearing rumours that Central American families with younger children were being allowed into the US, Irma Paz left Honduras with her husband and two kids on a nearly two-month journey to the banks of the Rio Grande.
They waded through the cold waters, turned themselves in to immigration authorities and were allowed in the country to request asylum.
“I thought, Thank you, my Lord.' We made the cut,” she said while waiting at a Brownsville bus station with her son and daughter, ages 3 and 5. They planned to travel to Oklahoma to join her father-in-law, carrying documents to present at a future immigration court hearing.
Meanwhile, in the border town of Reynosa, Mexico, a mother from El Salvador sobbed after US border authorities expelled her and her 8-year-old daughter. Their circumstances were almost the same as Paz's family, but they suffered a completely different fate — the result of a mysterious new system under President Joe Biden's administration that governs the fate of thousands of migrants with children who have arrived at the border in recent weeks.
The criteria to be allowed into the US are a closely held secret. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has referred only to “acute vulnerabilities” that qualify families for release in the United States to pursue asylum instead of immediate expulsion.
The mystery leaves migrants guessing as they arrive at the border.
For Paz, the system meant a ticket to Tulsa and a chance to reconnect with relatives. For the Salvadoran woman, Roxana Cardosa, it meant being banished to a violent Mexican border city with no food or money and sleeping on the concrete of a plaza.
The expulsions are among many challenges confronting the new administration at the border as it tries to maintain some elements of former President Donald Trump's deterrent policies while taking a softer stance toward the most vulnerable migrants. The issue also looms over Biden's efforts to pass landmark legislation that would grant a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people who are in the US illegally.
The asylum system arose from an emergency measure enacted during the coronavirus pandemic by the Trump administration that is being applied unevenly by Biden.
More than seven of 10 encounters at the border in February resulted in expulsions under pandemic-related powers known as “Title 42," named for a section of an obscure public health law the Trump administration invoked a year ago.
Biden has kept Title 42 in place as he designs what he promises will be “a humane asylum system.” Citizens of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are usually back in Mexico within two hours, while other nationalities are held in the US to be flown home without a chance at asylum.
In a break from Trump, the Biden administration releases most children traveling alone to relatives in the US and gives them notices to appear in immigration court. Nearly 9,500 such children arrived in February, up 60 per cent from a month earlier.
Nine of every 10 encounters with single adults in February resulted in expulsions under Title 42. Mayorkas said last week that the US makes exceptions only for adults with “certain acute vulnerabilities," without elaborating.
Families fall in the middle. Six of 10 people in migrant families encountered by authorities in February were allowed to stay in the US to seek asylum. Another factor, Mayorkas said, is that Mexico sometimes restricts the return of families, including in Texas' Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. The number of family arrivals in February topped 19,200, more than double the level from month earlier.
Limited detention space for nationalities that cannot be expelled to Mexico may also influence who gets released in the US, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
The administration has strong incentive to keep its reasoning secret. (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)