The United States is preparing for a potentially “chaotic” situation with the lifting, at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, of a measure locking access to its territory since the start of the pandemic, a change that has sown rumors and confusion among thousands of migrants waiting at the border with Mexico.
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 repeats tirelessly that “the border is not open” and that the authorities have adopted new restrictions on the right of asylum.
But “even after two years of preparations, we expect to see large numbers of arrivals at our southern border in the days and weeks following May 11,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted, while President Biden himself said the situation would be “chaotic for a while”.
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.
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.
Appointment or refusal
‘Title 42’ is scheduled to be lifted at 11:59 p.m. Washington time, but some migrants are rushing to cross the border before then to claim asylum, fearing the change in rules will prevent them from doing so for five years.
The authorities are already observing “a high number of arrivals in certain sectors”, according to Mr. Mayorkas.
“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.
Tears and frustrations
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.
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, where an NGO distributes food to the few people present, 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, Thursday will be “a day of infamy”.
“You are going to have millions of people coming to our country,” he said on CNN on Wednesday.
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.