Barbed wire along the Rio Grande on the Texas side of the U.S.-Mexico border (Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom).
EL PASO, Texas — Seventeen-year-old Karina Parababire gently cradled her three-month-old daughter as they waited in a migrant shelter before boarding a bus to Chicago on Friday evening.
“I want my daughter to have everything I didn’t have,” Parababire, who hiked the extremely dangerous Darien Gap route during her pregnancy, said in Spanish.
The Venezuelan, who is traveling with her family, had to stop in Honduras to give birth to her daughter Avis before continuing to the United States. Once in Mexico, she and her family received an appointment through the CBP One app – a tool Biden government uses to allow migrants to meet with an asylum officer.
She had been in the reception center of the Heilig Hartkerk with her family for four days. They planned to travel to Chicago, where they will be met by her cousin. Parababire hopes that after she arrives in the Windy City, she can go back to high school and possibly go to college.
Parababire and her family members arrived in the U.S. just before President Joe Biden issued an executive order that partially bans asylum claims when unauthorized crossings exceed a daily threshold. Because the family was admitted through the CBP One app, they were allowed to continue their journey.
As for other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, local leaders said this week they expect the order’s effects to be somewhat beneficial in limiting unauthorized crossings, though there was also plenty of skepticism.
Immigration advocates expressed deep concern that the order — issued after Congress failed to act on sweeping immigration legislation — would lead to more harm to already vulnerable people.
“I came here today to do what Republicans in Congress refuse to do: take the steps necessary to secure our border,” Biden said in announcing the order, referring to a bipartisan border security deal that Republicans reached earlier this year from running away. “This action will help us gain control of our border.”
Uncertainty about new policy
The holding center at Sacred Heart Church, where Parababire was housed, currently has a relatively low number of migrants – about 70 compared to a capacity of 120.
Its director, Michael DeBruhl, said it is unclear what impact the order will have on the number of migrants arriving not only at the shelter but also at the many ports of entry along the southern border.
“The point is, the Border Patrol is going to bear the brunt of this executive order and they’re going to have to deal with everyone,” he said. “The difference will be that there are nuances about how everything can apply to asylum, so they will make it harder for you to apply for asylum.”
The big question, DeBruhl said, “is how exactly they do that.”
“You’re going to have all these Border Patrol agents making these decisions, all these nuances, of a policy that was just implemented,” he said.
A Customs and Border Protection official declined to comment on the impact of the new executive order, but noted it would change the processing of non-citizens at the southern border.
Local officials saw some positives. “This is a start, but it’s just the beginning,” El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser said Wednesday during a presentation to reporters with local border officials.
Leeser was one of several Texas mayors present for the White House’s announcement of the executive order this week.
Leeser said he believes the order will stop unauthorized border crossings because “the consequences are greater now and that’s the difference.”
President’s campaign
The order, which is Biden’s most drastic action on immigration during his administration, comes five months before a presidential election in which it is a top issue for voters and for his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.
The order is currently in effect as daily unauthorized crossings at the southern border have reached the threshold of more than 2,500 encounters with migrants per day for a week.
“Simply put, the Departments do not have adequate resources and tools to make timely decisions and consequences for individuals who cross the border unlawfully and cannot establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, or to provide timely protection to those that ultimately qualify for protection when individuals arrive at such lofty, historical tomes,” reads the text of the executive order’s interim final rule.
The order will disappear once government officials determine that fewer than 1,500 people per day have crossed the border in a week. Unaccompanied children are exempt, as are victims of human trafficking, people on visas, those with medical emergencies or those reporting serious threats to their lives.
Those migrants who arrive at ports of entry to seek asylum once the limit is reached and do not demonstrate a “reasonable likelihood of persecution or torture in the country of removal” will be expelled and subject to a five-year ban on seeking asylum . in the US, according to the Department of Homeland Security.
Returning to Mexico or home countries
Leeser said the order will help manage large numbers of migrants at ports of entry because it will allow the Biden administration to send those migrants back to their home countries or elsewhere in Mexico if their home countries are deemed too dangerous .
Leeser said that as a result, he expects migrants to use more legal routes, such as the CBP One app, which allows appointments to be made with an immigration officer to apply for asylum.
More than 1,400 migrants are processed every day via the CPB One app for appointments with an immigration officer. The wait for an appointment can take about five to eight months, according to a May report from the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, which documents asylum claims at ports of entry.
But Juan Acereto Cervera, the adviser to the mayor of Juárez, Mexico, which borders El Paso, expressed skepticism that the White House’s new policy will deter people from crossing the border to seek asylum.
“Nothing will stop this migration,” he said. “It’s because something is happening in their other countries that makes these people try to find the best country in the world, which is the United States. That is the truth.”
Jorge Rodriguez, the coordinator of the El Paso City & County Office of Emergency Management, said it is common for the number of migrants arriving in El Paso to fluctuate based on changes in White House immigration policy.
“With time… what we’ll see is how this one will ultimately play out,” he said.
Legal action is imminent
Under U.S. immigration law, noncitizens must apply for asylum when they reach U.S. territory and then make that claim. They can remain in the US and receive a fair trial if they fear persecution based on their “race, religion, national origin, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been at the forefront of many lawsuits against the Trump administration’s immigration policies — including those that limited asylum — has already stated that it plans to sue the Biden administration over its executive order.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, whose district includes El Paso, said in a statement that she was disappointed that the Biden administration focused its executive order solely on enforcement.
“It is my sincere hope that administrative immigration relief actions, such as parole for the spouses of U.S. citizens and granting temporary protected status for vulnerable populations, will also occur,” she said.
‘A very dangerous place’
Immigration advocates and advocates in El Paso said Wednesday during a separate panel with reporters that they fear the impact the executive order could have on migrants.
“I think we kind of know what’s going to happen; it’s creating a backlog,” said Imelda Maynard, an attorney at Estrella Del Paso Legal Aid.
Maynard said she can easily see how the executive order will be misinterpreted by migrants who will think the 2,500 threshold is a quota to allow people into the US.
“What the government is trying to do, which is reduce the number of irregular entries, I think that will increase,” she said.
Father Rafael Garcia, a priest who serves Sacred Heart Church, said he expects the executive order will cause more migrants to wait in Mexico, which could burden Mexico and leave these migrants in dangerous situations.
“It’s hard to know how this will turn out, but it doesn’t look very good,” Garcia said.
Sacred Heart Church director DeBruhl said he thinks it will take a few weeks for the full impact of the executive order to be seen.
“The conservatives say it won’t make any difference… the (Biden) administration says this will have a specific (effect) and will be quite impactful,” he said. “I don’t think anyone really knows how this is going to end.”
Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, which advocates for solidarity and justice across border areas, said the order will require many migrants to wait in Mexico, and “right now Mexico is a very dangerous place for migrants to stay. in.”
“We think this could worsen the situation, or push people to find other routes to enter the country that are less controlled, have fewer services, have fewer people receiving them and providing assistance,” she said .
This story was reported through an El Paso-based fellowship on U.S. immigration policy organized by Poynter, an institute for the professional development of journalists, with funding from the Catena Foundation.
The post At the US-Mexico border, hopes and fears following Biden’s order to limit asylum first appeared on Missouri Independent.
