A new border crackdown unveiled by the Biden This week’s administration is likely to disproportionately affect families, whose rising numbers over the past decade have drastically changed the profile of the population crossing the southern border.
Family units represent a significant portion of border crossings, accounting for about 40% of all migrants entering the United States this year. Families have generally been released quickly into the country due to legal restrictions that prevent children from being held for extended periods.
They will then join the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States indefinitely, under the radar of U.S. authorities, as they await court hearings years into the future.
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But according to a memo issued by the Homeland Security Department and obtained by The New York Times, families will be returned to their home countries within days under President Joe Biden’s new border policy, which temporarily closed the U.S.-Mexico border to most asylum seekers . from Wednesday 12:01 pm.
The implications of the new policy are enormous for families, who are among the most vulnerable groups making the journey to the United States. Advocates warn this could have dangerous consequences, increasing the likelihood that parents will separate from their children or send them to the border alone because unaccompanied minors are exempt from the new policy.
The vast majority of families seeking asylum are from Central America and Mexico, putting them in a category described in the memo as “easily removable,” similar to single adults from those regions. The note sets out how authorities should implement the new policy.
Smuggling organizations had long used the likelihood that migrants would be released after illegally entering the country as a selling point. But the new border policy makes no distinction between how families and single adults who enter the country illegally are treated, erasing the perceived benefit of arriving as a family.
Instead, families would be prioritized for expedited removal, said a Biden administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss the executive action.
“This seems like a remarkably cynical strategy to increase the number of deportees by targeting the most vulnerable segment of the migration flow,” said Wayne Cornelius, director emeritus of the Mexican Migration Field Research Program at the University of California San Diego.
But with the number of people crossing the border at record levels, the new policy was an effort to reduce illegal immigration and ameliorate one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities in his campaign against former President Donald Trump. Biden is under pressure, even from his own party, to do something about immigration.
In a major change that mimics a Trump-era practice, some families who claim they should be an exception to the new asylum restrictions will be given a so-called credible fear interview while in detention at the border, which will be difficult to pass while they reside in their country. detention and without a lawyer.
“It is horrifying to hear that the Biden administration is quietly rolling out one of Trump’s absolute worst border testing programs — subjecting families to rapid, credible fear interviews while held in Border Patrol custody,” said immigration attorney Taylor Levy.
The removal of families is made easier by the fact that most come from Guatemala, Honduras and other countries in the Western Hemisphere. These countries are relatively close to the United States and are already accepting repatriations, unlike many countries in Africa and Asia, which are far away and whose governments are less likely to accept deportees.
Biden’s order, which took effect Wednesday, gives border agents the authority to turn back — or quickly deport — migrants who enter the country illegally, with some exceptions.
The border will only reopen if the number of unauthorized crossings falls to fewer than 1,500 for seven days in a row and remains that way for two weeks. The numbers have not been this low in years; in December there were about 10,000 illegal crossings every day.
Recently the figures have fluctuated around 3,000 crossings per day.
For decades, single adult men planning to work in the United States made up the vast majority of migrants arriving in the country. They left their wives and children behind and sent money home to support them.
Around 2013, entire families began migrating from Central America in significant numbers, driven largely by a wave of gang-related violence. The Obama administration struggled with the influx, treating it as an emergency.
The tide continued to rise and has not stopped for over a decade.
“Family migration became increasingly important as a strategy to protect children from cartel and gang-related violence,” Cornelius said.
Because no immigration detention centers were equipped for women with children and there were limits on how long children could be held, the families were quickly released by U.S. Border Patrol with orders to appear in court for deportation hearings. The families then traveled to relatives living in the United States.
Most single people continued to be held for days or longer – and were often processed for immediate deportation.
Migrants traveling as families sent word home that they could remain in the United States at least temporarily, prompting others to make the trek north.
Smugglers fueled rumors of special treatment for families to generate more business, as parents with children were less likely to undertake the dangerous journey without a guide.
Soon, adult men who wanted to work in the United States also began crossing the border with children, whom they knew would allow them to stay in the country.
Families with children quickly became a significant, rapidly growing part of the migrant population. At the same time, the number of single adults as a percentage of the total plummeted. Some years their sheer numbers were dwarfed by those who came into families.
For example, between 2018 and 2019, the number of migrants in family units who crossed the border illegally increased from 77,794 to 432,838, an increase of 456%. The number of apprehended migrants who were single adults increased by 30%, from 198,492 to 258,375.
Last year, 621,311 family units were apprehended after crossing the southern border.
In recent years, Mexican families displaced by cartels that control parts of their territory have been crossing the border in increasing numbers to seek safety in the United States.
In the first eight months of fiscal year 2024, which began Oct. 1, Border Patrol apprehended nearly 150,000 Mexican migrant families entering the United States illegally, compared with 87,014 in 2023 and 17,040 in 2020.
“There have been huge numbers of Mexican families coming, and they are easy to send back,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, because they can be bused back to their country. .
The removal of families and the exemption for unaccompanied minors under the new restrictions will almost certainly lead to family separations as desperate parents decide to send their children alone, often with smugglers, she said.
In May last year, a four-year-old child in the United States was dropped over the steel wall that separates San Diego from the Mexican city of Tijuana. The child survived. Two years earlier, agents had rescued two young sisters, three and five, who had been dropped on the U.S. side of the barrier in New Mexico.
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