(El Paso) The United States warned Thursday that its border with Mexico was not “wide open”, before the lifting at 11:59 p.m. of a measure locking access to its territory since the start of the pandemic. , a change that confuses many migrants and could, according to the authorities, cause a “chaotic” situation.
Will there be an influx? Faced with the Republicans who overwhelm it and demand the maintenance of this measure, “Title 42”, the government of Democrat Joe Biden recalls in particular that new restrictions on the right of asylum have been adopted.
“I want to be very clear: our border is not wide open. People crossing our border illegally and without a legal basis to stay will be immediately […] expelled,” Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas said at a White House press conference.
However, “we are lucid about the challenges that we are likely to face in the days and weeks to come and we are ready to respond to them”, he added, noting that “a high number of arrivals” had already been observed “in certain sectors”.
President Biden himself recently claimed that the situation would be “chaotic for a while”.
PHOTO ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Migrants in Brownsville, Texas.
To prepare, the federal state has mobilized “more than 24,000 agents and law enforcement officers” at the border, in addition to 4,000 soldiers.
On Thursday, in the border town of Brownsville, Texas, migrants crossed the border sporadically in groups of 20, according to an AFP journalist on the spot.
Restrictions on asylum
The lifting of “Title 42” is scheduled for 11:59 p.m. Washington time (11:59 p.m. ET Friday), but some migrants are rushing to cross the border some 3,000 km before that deadline to seek asylum, lest the change in rules prevent them from doing so for five years.
“Title 42”, supposed to limit the spread of COVID-19, gave the possibility to American authorities to immediately return all migrants entering the country, including asylum seekers. In three years, it has been used 2.8 million times.
New asylum restrictions, finalized by the US Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, will go into effect Thursday evening.
Before presenting themselves at the border, asylum seekers, with the exception of unaccompanied minors, must now have obtained an appointment on a telephone application set up by the border guards, or have been refused access. asylum in one of the countries crossed during their migratory journey.
Otherwise, their request will be presumed illegitimate and they may be subject to an accelerated deportation procedure, prohibiting them from entering American soil for five years.
Faced with changing migration patterns, rumors spread by smugglers and a complex online procedure, the migrants who pile up in northern Mexico bear witness to a puzzle.
Tears and frustrations
The “CBP One” application, designed to centralize asylum requests in the United States, is at the heart of the frustrations of migrants at the border, where telephones, wifi and electricity are a luxury.
Because of its frequent bugs, “it’s a nightmare, a real ordeal. This app undermines us emotionally and psychologically,” says Juan Pavon, a trader who fled Venezuela with his family, as his 14-year-old daughter Ana Paola cries bitterly: an app update erased all her data .
Migrants come mainly from Latin America, but also from China, Russia or Turkey.
Met in downtown El Paso, Luis Rodriguez, 24, from Venezuela, explains that he does not have enough money to pay for transport to Washington, where he wants to join friends.
“I go to the hairdresser to see if they let me work” to collect the sum, he says.
The Democratic executive is keen, on the burning subject of immigration, to display a balanced policy, while the Republicans accuse Joe Biden, new candidate for 2024, of having transformed the border into a “sieve”.
Thus for former Republican President Donald Trump, “Joe Biden has officially abolished what was left of America’s borders”.
In order to encourage legal channels of immigration, Washington has planned to eventually open a hundred centers abroad to study the files on the spot. The first are planned in Colombia and Guatemala.