The Government resumes the controversial side flights to return immigrants to Mexico without the opportunity to request asylum

By Julia Ainsley - NBC News

The government chaired by Joe Biden will resume the so-called lateral flights through which asylum seekers who cross from Mexico are sent to another American city before being deported, according to two pro-immigrant groups familiar with the White House decision.

Immigrants are likely to be airlifted from the busy sections of the Rio Grande or Del Rio Valley in Texas to towns like El Paso, and then sent back to Mexico from there across the border.

Del Rio is 373 miles by air from El Paso.

This practice

has been criticized by immigrant advocates, who allege that it gives them a false idea that they will be allowed to remain in the United States

, before being expelled to areas of Mexico where they do not have connections or resources to obtain help. 

[Immigration does not increase crime in the United States, as the Texas Government falsely points out]

"We should not summarily expel asylum seekers without a hearing, but we certainly should not increase the cruelty and trauma they suffer by placing them on these flights without any knowledge of what is happening to them," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Immigrant Rights Project.

The United States confirms its intention to reopen the border with Mexico as soon as possible

June 17, 202100: 21

Gelernt said immigrants are often

led to believe that they will be flown to a place in the United States where they will be allowed to stay.

There are reports of migrants who have crossed the border back to Mexico on side flights, and have bitterly discovered that they do not know the place to which they were returned and, above all, that they cannot re-enter the United States.

The Department of Homeland Security suspended these controversial flights in May, as part of the litigation over the so-called Title 42, a restriction adopted by former President Donald Trump in the face of the pandemic to expel most immigrants before they have the opportunity to apply. asylum hiding in stopping the coronavirus.

The Biden Administration began implementing these flights in early March, when the number of detained migrants attempting to cross the border began to rise.

It is not known if the practice was ever used in previous administrations.

"Arm yourselves": the call of Donald Trump's daughter-in-law to border residents is alarming

June 14, 202101: 35

"Various sectors of the Border Patrol have seen a significant increase [in immigrant arrivals] in recent months. In order to process people as safely and quickly as possible, they can be transported by air or land to others. sectors along the southwest border, "defended a spokesman for the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. 

[A driver's license has changed the lives of thousands of undocumented immigrants in the US]

For now, the government will only place single adult migrants on the side flights, according to the two pro-immigrant groups, who

say Biden has transported entire families in the past.

In mid-May, when the program was suspended, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security said the government reserved "the right to restart lateral flights" if it considered "that circumstances justify it."

Last week, CBP reported that the number of illegal border crossings continued to rise in May, from more than 178,000 to just over 180,000, a figure that surpassed the monthly record already set this year, and that broke a mark reached 20 years ago. years.