By Julia Ainsley -
NBC News
The Department of Homeland Security plans to fly migrants who apply for asylum at the border -- and are not instantly turned away -- to inland cities hundreds of miles away, including Los Angeles, California, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
This plan seeks to alleviate the shelters in cities along the border, which have had to initially take care of the thousands of immigrants who manage to cross from Mexico each month and be admitted into the asylum system.
The record number of arrivals has sometimes caused Customs and Border Protection (CPB) to abandon migrants to their fate on the street or by a bus station, sometimes without even finishing previous immigration procedures.
[“They beat us with sticks and ropes”: migrant narrates how he was captured by the Border Patrol]
Migrants who are allowed to stay in the country and file asylum claims are typically taken to religious and non-governmental organization shelters once they are released from CBP custody.
From there, migrants pay for their bus transportation to the cities where they will live until they appear before an immigration court to decide their case.
Nicaraguan migrants walk on the border between Mexico and the United States, in Algodones, Baja California, Mexico, December 2, 2021.Felix Marquez / AP
This new model will use federal funds to send migrants to shelters in cities in the interior of the country before they can go to their final destinations.
In addition to Los Angeles, the cities to which they will be sent include Albuquerque (New Mexico), Houston and Dallas (Texas).
DHS is working with shelters in those cities before moving the migrants.
The agency's Southwest Border Coordination Center, which combines officials from FEMA, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP and others, is coordinating the effort.
"The Abbott Scheme"
Internally, DHS officials have jokingly referred to the model as "the Abbot plan," an official explained to NBC News, referring to Texas Governor Greg Abbott's decision to move migrants who wanted it in bus and free of charge from Texas to Washington, DC His intention was to highlight in the capital the problem posed by the incessant arrival of migrants in that state, although many of them were grateful that they would be paid for transportation so that they could then go to other places. .
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Although the public health order known as Title 42, through which thousands of asylum seekers have been expelled since 2020, remains in effect, less than half of the migrants who arrived at the border were expelled under that order. order in April, the last month for which data are available.
That month, CBP intercepted 234,088 migrants, a record number (although it may lead to repeats because some migrants were intercepted more than once).