He Title 42 ends Thursday at midnightis the emergency health order used during the COVID-19 pandemic at the US-Mexico border to quickly expel migrants back to Mexico or their country of origin.
The Biden administration introduced strict asylum measures that Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says will lead to the removal of most migrants at the border, where some say estimates, some 150,000 people wait to enter the US.
“This is what will happen: you will be returned”, Mayorkas said at a press conference in Washington on Wednesday. “Our border is not open.”
At the border, migrants don’t know what to do next. Priscilla Orta, an immigration attorney in Brownsville, Texas, has been crossing the border into Matamoros, Mexico, every week to explain to migrants the process they are about to face.
“If you enter for any other circumstance apart from the app [la aplicación CBP One]or by appointment only, you will not be considered eligible for asylum, which, having worked day in and day out with the people who are waiting, especially here in Matamoros, that is precisely what they are looking for: an opportunity to apply for asylum.” Orta said to the voice of america.
With the end of Title 42, Orta advises migrants to use the CBP One app to secure an appointment, and informs them that if they cross without authorization, they will be removed immediately. But even with the additional 1,000 quotes available in the app recently announcedpeople will have to wait for some time.
Neris Arruaz arrived in Matamoros a month ago and is still not sure when her family will be able to show up at a port of entry. She was an accountant in Cuba. In case she can cross into the United States, she warns, she has plans to become a businesswoman and help her family get ahead.
For communities along the border, an increase in migrant arrivals is not new.
“The reality is there are thousands, more than 2,000, coming in every day,” Cameron County, Texas Judge Eddie Trevino Jr. said in Brownsville.
Trevino says that has been the reality for decades and he declined to talk about the border being unsafe or safe from anything.
“Just because we have had these increases in the number of migrants, that in itself has not created the border as an unsafe area,” he said.
“It has simply created the situation that our immigration system is broken. And we’ve known that for over 40 years and yet the administration or Congress time and time again continue to kick the can. [en el camino] saying, ‘Let someone else handle that,’ because they don’t want to deal with the political fallout,” the judge said.
All immigrants are processed under Title 8, the federal code of laws dealing with immigration.
“This is a long-standing immigration enforcement authority that various administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have used to prosecute people. It has serious consequences for irregular migration, including a re-entry ban of at least five years and possible criminal prosecution for repeated attempts to cross illegally,” Mayorkas told reporters in late April.
For border patrol officers, the mission is clear. Process immigrants who qualify under current guidelines and expeditiously deport those who do not.
In Photos | Life in a migrant camp in El Paso, Texas, days from the end of Title 42
“The border is not open, okay?” he told the VOA Border Patrol agent Fidel Baca. “If you enter between the ports of entry, you are entering the country illegally. OK? and you are subject to the consequences. Another thing that will come with Title 8 is the consequences. What I mean by that is that people are going to be kicked out. They will face deportation with a five-year re-entry ban.”
For the migrants who were able to cross to the US side, the journey is not over. Rose Carillo, a Venezuelan migrant, is asking for asylum. Her immigration court date is scheduled for May 2024.
“I hope to eventually bring my children,” she told the audience in Spanish. VOA. “I miss them so much. It’s so hard to be separated from my family. And they are my only family, my mother, my three children. I have no one to help them. And if I don’t work, they don’t eat. My dream is to have them here”.
US immigration officials are urging migrants to use the CBP One app if they plan to apply for asylum. They say the next few days will be busy.
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