The scenario is so tense that any incident can make everything go haywire. There are tens of thousands of people at the border with Mexico, ready to enter the United States without documents in the coming hours.
Entire families are staying in makeshift tents on the streets or sleeping on the floors of churches, fleeing crises in their countries. US President Joe Biden himself admitted that the situation will be "chaotic for a while", but fears that it will be more serious and that is why he sent more than 1,500 troops to the border. But behind it all there is a hardening of immigration policy and a possible humanitarian drama.
The crisis originates before a deadline: one minute before midnight this Thursday expires Title 42, the measure introduced by former President Donald Trump in 2020 that allowed the immediate deportation of migrants who arrived without papers in times of pandemic and by which most of those who entered through the border with Mexico were expelled without having to accept their asylum applications.
The Biden administration is under strong pressure from the Republican Party, which calls for tough measures against migration and also, like Trump, the erection of a wall of thousands of kilometers. Some members of the opposition party predict the arrival of a million people at the border in the next three months.
Tens of thousands of people at the border with Mexico, ready to enter the United States without documents. Photo Reuters
Hundreds of thousands
But it is already estimated that there are about 150,000 people ready to enter. Others have already passed the brink and wait in makeshift tents in towns like El Paso.
18 months before the presidential election, and with migration always a topic of contention, Biden launched new rules to replace Title 42, which he hopes will help stem the flow at the border and also sent 1,500 additional troops for administrative tasks, in addition to the hundreds of Texas soldiers sent by Governor Greg Abbott to "help intercept and repel" migrants.
The possibility of skyrocketing the flow of migrants, many of them in poverty and victims of violence or corruption, led President Biden to adopt new rules, with rewards for those who take advantage of them but that migrant defense associations consider insufficient, defective and unchanged from Trump's.
Although he had promised "a more humane immigration policy," the last thing the Democrat wants, in the middle of an election campaign, is to be accused of letting the border be a sieve.
U.S. soldiers in El Paso, Texas. Photo Reuters
"The border is not going to be open," a U.S. official said on a call with reporters, but "harsh consequences" will be imposed on those who try to enter the United States illegally.
They added that in total "more than 4,000 people" have been sent to the border temporarily to reinforce operations and "all our asylum officers have been retrained so that they are ready and willing for the interviews that will be necessary for the accelerated repatriation that we will begin to carry out from Thursday."
"We are going to process the migrants we find at the border with expedited repatriation," the officials insisted, explaining that citizens of Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti who do not present a legal basis "will be returned to Mexico with a repatriation order."
Biden's plan contemplates a controversial point that is the prohibition of migrants from requesting asylum when they have not used "legal channels" to enter the country, although it makes an exception for those who have "a reasonable fear of persecution or torture in the country of removal."
The government also announced that they will launch an application to speed up the procedures and will open some 100 care centers in several countries of the hemisphere so that they can begin to process these possible "legal channels" away from the United States.
Biden's plan prohibits migrants from seeking asylum when they have not used "legal avenues. AFP Photo
Criticism of Biden
Migration experts are not satisfied. "President Biden clearly failed to deliver on his campaign promises promising fair and dignified treatment for migrants and an end to policies that block access for asylum seekers," Denise Gilman, director of the Immigration Clinic and a law professor at the University of Texas, told Clarín.
"The new parole programs Biden has implemented are insufficient and flawed. They do not apply to everyone who needs protection (for example Salvadorans or Hondurans), they are limited in number and there are serious problems with the application process," he added.
While the expert considers that the expiring Title 42 is "a disastrous program that violated international human rights law and U.S. norms and put many migrants in extreme danger," she does not believe Biden's new policy will improve things.
"Unfortunately, instead of sending health and human services personnel to the border to receive migrants, the Biden administration has insisted on returning to the same old measures to try to stop arrivals at the border that have failed in the past such as the expanded use of detention and expedited deportation proceedings that return migrants to their home countries without even seeing a judge. of immigration."
Hours pass and tension at the border grows: with a "deterrent" objective, Border Patrol agents plan to carry out a special operation to dehend migrants in El Paso, Texas, in whose streets hundreds of people have been sleeping for days, to detect those who have not been processed and repatriate those who do not meet the requirements to request to stay in the country.
Biden officials explained that the goal is for immigrants who cross the border illegally to face "stronger consequences than exist under Title 42."
PB
See also
