The Biden Administration has tasked six humanitarian groups with recommending
which migrants should be allowed into the United States to apply for asylum
, as it faces mounting pressure to lift public health rules that have prevented people from seeking protection.
The consortium of groups is determining who is more vulnerable than those waiting in Mexico to enter the United States, and the criteria they are using have not been made public.
It occurs when large numbers of migrants are crossing the southern border and the government has been rapidly expelling them from the country under a public health order reused by former President Donald Trump and maintained by President Joe Biden during the coronavirus pandemic.
Several members of the consortium disclosed details about the new system to The Associated Press news agency.
The government aims to admit up to 250 asylum seekers per day who are referred by the groups, accepting that system only until July 31.
By then,
the consortium hopes that the Biden Administration will have lifted the public health rules known as Title 42,
although the government has not committed to that.
An asylum seeker holds a child while they are detained by the Border Patrol near Yuma, Arizona, on April 19, 2021. REUTERS / Jim Urquhart
So far, nearly 800 asylum seekers have entered the country since May 3, and consortium members say there is already more demand than they can meet.
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The groups have not been publicly identified except for the International Rescue Committee, a global aid organization.
The others are Save the Children, based in London;
two US-based organizations, HIAS and Kids in Need of Defense;
and two Mexico-based organizations, Asylum Access and the Institute for Women in Migration, according to two people with direct knowledge who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information was not intended for public release.
Asylum Access, which provides services to asylum seekers in Mexico, characterized its role at a minimum.
The effort began on the El Paso
, Texas
border
and is expanding to Nogales, Arizona.
A similar but different system led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) began in late March and
allows 35 families to enter the United States a day
at locations along the border.
It has no end date.
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Participating organizations describe the two tracks as
an imperfect transition from so-called Title 42 authority
, named after a section of an obscure 1944 public health law that Trump used in March 2020 to effectively end asylum in the US. Mexican border.
With rising COVID-19 vaccination rates, Biden is struggling to justify expulsions on public health grounds and faces demands from the UN refugee agency and members of his own party and administration to end them. .
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The Department of Homeland Security indicated in a statement that it is in "close coordination with international and non-governmental organizations in Mexico" to identify vulnerable people and that it has the last word on who enters.
The agency described its work with the groups as fluid.
Critics of the new selection processes say that too much power is conferred on a small number of organizations
and that the efforts are not public, nor is there a clear explanation of how these groups were chosen.
Critics also claim that there are no guarantees that the most vulnerable or deserving migrants will be chosen to seek asylum.
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The consortium was formed after the United States government asked the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Mexico for the names of organizations with extensive experience and capacity in that country, said Sibylla Brodzinsky, a spokeswoman for the office. from the ONU.
"We have had a long relationship with them and they are trusted partners," he
said.
The groups claim that they are simply streamlining the process, but that cases of vulnerable migrants can come from anywhere, explaining that they have not been identified for security reasons.
"Now I feel at peace"
Susana Coreas, who fled El Salvador, is one of those identified as vulnerable and allowed to enter the United States last month.
Koreas spent more than a year in Ciudad Juárez waiting to apply for asylum, but the US public health order prevented him from doing so.
She and other transgender women renovated an abandoned hotel for a safe place to stay after feeling uncomfortable in various shelters in the harsh Mexican city and getting help from the International Rescue Committee.
Susana Coreas, a trans woman who fled El Salvador, in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on March 24, 2021 International Rescue Committee via AP
The problems did not stop.
A transgender woman was pointed with a knife.
Another was pointed with a pistol.
"There was a lot of anxiety," Coreas said.
"
Now I feel at peace," he
said.
With information from The Associated Press.