Biden Opens The Door To Asylum Seekers

A small group of migrants timidly salute last Friday from a huge bus that is heading to the San Ysidro border post in San Diego (California).

They are the first to enter the United States with active cases in the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, for its acronym in English), a program implemented by former US President Donald Trump with which his country returned to Mexico more than 71,000 applicants asylum, mostly Central American, and with whom his successor, Joe Biden , promised to end in his first days in the White House.

With the entry of that group into the United States, the Biden government began to dismantle the program by which the United States sent those who came to its territory in search of protection to dangerous cities in the neighboring country.

The measure can benefit up to 26,000 people who still have active MPP cases and who have been waiting for months in shelters, refugee camps and private homes in northern Mexico for a US judge to hear their asylum applications. The pandemic paralyzed those processes and put migrants in limbo.

The reception of asylum seekers in the United States got underway this weekend, coinciding with Biden’s first month in the White House. Processing began on Friday in the Mexican city of Tijuana (Baja California), the border point where the MPPs began to be implemented in January 2019, and in the next few days it will be extended across the Texas border, to the bridges that connect Matamoros (Tamaulipas) with Brownsville and Ciudad Juárez (Chihuahua) with El Paso.

To do this, Washington implemented a platform operated in coordination with the Mexican Government and the assistance of the United Nations agencies in charge of assisting migrants and refugees, UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

“There is an urgent need to attend to the vulnerable people who are in this situation,” said a United Nations official in a call with the media in which he explained how the process would work.

The procedure contemplates that asylum seekers fill out an online form to request the transfer to American cities where they have relatives or friends who receive them and where they will wait for their appointment before an immigration court.

The beneficiaries will be summoned to the border 24 hours before the day assigned for their crossing. There they will be tested for antigens to rule out that they are infected with coronavirus. If the result is negative, they will be processed by the Border Patrol and released with the date of their next appointment before a judge.

In the event that a migrant is infected, they will be transferred to a facility where they can quarantine before crossing the border to the United States.

In the United States, the migrants “will be processed quickly and will be brought with us, who will give them a connection with their relatives in the places where their immigration processes will continue,” explains Norma Pimentel , director of Catholic Charities in the Rio Grande Valley.

At your organization’s shelter in McAllen (Texas) they are already prepared to receive asylum seekers. As was the case before Trump implemented the MPPs, they will offer them bed and food and help them buy their plane or bus tickets so they can travel to other parts of the United States, where their family or friends await them.

“They are very happy that a door was opened and that they are hopeful that they will possibly enter the United States to continue their asylum process,” says Pimentel. The nun says she is happy after having seen asylum seekers suffer – many of them families with young children – in the Matamoros migrant camp , a settlement next to the Rio Grande, where in recent days, with the wave of cold, temperatures have dropped below zero degrees Celsius.

“The families are suffering a lot. But there is that hope that there is an opportunity for their case to be heard correctly and they will stop suffering at least in these inhuman circumstances in which they are, ”he says.

Asylum seekers living in that camp are expected to be among the first to cross into the United States due to their vulnerable situation, one of the criteria by which transfers will be prioritized.

The time they have been waiting in Mexico will be another factor that the agencies that implement the program will take into account when summoning asylum seekers, as well as whether they suffer from serious health problems or have been victims of crimes or severe trauma. , among other things.

The day in which the program began to be implemented was lived with confusion among the migrants waiting on the Mexican side. In Tijuana, hundreds of them approached the border crossings despite warnings from the US authorities asking them not to do so if they did not have an appointment, while in the Matamoros migrant camp, asylum seekers tried to enter from their mobile phones. the platform enabled by the Government without success because the web was saturated.

“People are very confused because they do not understand where we are supposed to sign up,” Josué Cornejo, a Honduran migrant who has been waiting in that settlement since July 2019 with his wife and three children between the ages of seven and 14, told EL PAÍS years.

United Nations agencies insist on asking migrants for patience and assure that all those who have active cases in the MPPs, even those who were denied asylum and have an appeal pending, will be able to cross into the United States. This measure is the The first with which the Biden government intends to restore the right of asylum in the country, which was curtailed by Trump through a series of executive actions, administrative orders and agreements with third countries.

However, the southern border remains closed to new applications for title 42, which Donald Trump invoked over the coronavirus pandemic. “Don’t come right now,” asks Édgar Ramírez, from the US embassy in Mexico in a message distributed on consular social networks .

“In order to ensure a safe, orderly and humane process, we will only accept migrants with active MPP cases who have followed the official process. You will not be allowed to enter the United States in any other way. The border remains closed and we continue to enforce our immigration laws. ”

In addition, the new government insists on sending the message to Central Americans that now is not the time to migrate. Although the president “is committed to long-term immigration reform ,” it will take time, warns Biden’s team in their statements.

This week, Democrats in Congress presented the president’s ambitious plan that seeks to legalize the 11 million undocumented that were estimated to be in the country until January of this year. The bill would need at least the vote of ten Republican senators to pass, a tough target on an issue like immigration that has polarized the country after four years of Trump.

Beyond the possibilities of this reform, for those who work with migrants at the border, sending those affected by the Migrant Protection Protocols to the United States is a good first step, but it is not enough to undo the immigration policies of the four years of the Republican government.

“How is the United States going to restore the figure of asylum?” Asked from Tijuana Soraya Vázquez, a lawyer for the non-governmental organization Al Otro Lado. “It has to be creating conditions so that everyone can enter. Whether or not they are granted asylum is another matter, but they have to guarantee the right to apply for it and that is what they have said they are going to do. They should be thinking that ”.