TIJUANA, Mexico (AP) — Teodoso Vargas told U.S. officials on the day that President Joe Biden’s administration ended public health measures to deter many asylum seekers at the Mexican border during the coronavirus pandemic. I was ready to show pictures of myself with scars and bullets. body.
Instead, he stood frozen with his pregnant wife and five-year-old son at the Tijuana intersection, meters from the mainland United States.
He spoke about the new rules that will be introduced with the changes, and whether taking the following steps to seek asylum directly with U.S. authorities would force him to return to his home country of Honduras: I wasn’t sure.
“I can’t go back to my country,” said Vargas. He was shot nine times by robbers in his home country and the surgery left him with a long scar on his neck. “I don’t want to go home because I’m scared. I believe the United States will let me in if I can show the evidence I have.”
Asylum seekers say their joy at the end of public health restrictions known as Title 42 this month has been replaced by anxiety over uncertainty over how the Biden administration’s new rules will affect them. Say it’s changing.
While the government has opened some new avenues for immigration, the fate of many is largely in the hands of a U.S. government app, which is used only to book appointments at ports of entry. It cannot decipher human suffering or assess an applicant’s vulnerability.
The Department of Homeland Security said in an email to The Associated Press that the CBP One app will help create a more efficient and orderly system at the border “while eliminating unscrupulous smugglers who profit from vulnerable immigrants.” said to be an important tool for
However, since its launch in January, the app has been criticized for having technical issues. Demand far exceeds the approximately 1,000 bookings available daily on the app.
Being Honduran, Vargas is ineligible to participate in many of the legal proceedings introduced by the Biden administration. One program gives up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans each month a chance at humanitarian parole if they apply online, have a funder in the United States, and arrive by air. Minors traveling alone are also exempt from the rule.
The government has announced that migrants who do not comply with the rules can be deported back to their home countries and banned from applying for asylum for five years.
Vargas said he decided not to take risks. He’s been logging into the app at 9 a.m. every day for the past three months from his rented room in the crime-ridden Tijuana neighborhood.
His experience is shared with tens of thousands of asylum-seekers in towns on the Mexican border.
Immigration attorney Blaine Bookie said that for many people at the border, “people who didn’t make reservations through the CBP app don’t seem to have the option of applying for asylum at this time.”
The government said it would prioritize people using the app rather than denying asylum seekers.
Bucky’s group, the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, is one of the leading plaintiffs, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, and is part of new rules in federal court in San Francisco, including the requirement to first apply for asylum in the country. I am appealing. They crossed on their way to the United States. They are asking courts to allow asylum applications by those in the mainland United States.
Republican lawmakers in Texas have also filed lawsuits. Among other things, they allege, the CBP One app encourages illegal immigration by retrieving reservations without properly screening applicants for a legal basis for their stay.
The Biden administration said new measures, including the app, have reduced illegal immigration by more than 70% since Title 42 ended on May 11.
From its launch on January 12 through the end of April, more than 79,000 people were hospitalized under CBP One. According to the government, from May 12 to May 19, an average of 1,070 people a day made reservations on the app and appeared at the port of entry. He didn’t provide the latest numbers, but said the numbers should increase as the effort expands.
The administration also stressed improvements in recent weeks. The app can prioritize those who have tried the longest. Reservations are accepted online all day to avoid overloading the system. Persons suffering from acute medical conditions or facing imminent threat of murder, rape, kidnapping or other “exceptional compelling circumstances” may only request priority status directly at the port of entry. increase. You cannot enter case details in the app.
Still, lawyers say some asylum seekers claim to have been turned down at intersections while applying.
Corral Rivera, eight months pregnant from Mexico, said she has been trying to book through the app for two months. She said she recently went to the Texas crossroads to file her own case with U.S. authorities, but Mexican immigration officers in Matamoros stopped her and her husband.
“They ask me to book an appointment through an app,” said Rivera, whose family is being threatened by members of a drug cartel.
Priscilla Horta, an immigration attorney with the Good Government Lawyers Association in Brownsville, Texas, said a Honduran woman in the Mexican border city of Reynosa was tracked by a man who accused her of raping her through her cell phone. He said he had secured his custody using schedule.
Orta said the woman was raped again and has not been heard from since.
“It hurts me to know that I just have to put up with the abuse in Mexico because if I don’t, I could hurt myself forever in the long run,” the lawyer said. .
Orta said he used to be able to ask U.S. border officials at checkpoints to prioritize cancer patients, victims of torture and members of the LGBTQ community, and would usually schedule interviews. . But her local officials told her that she could no longer receive guidance from Washington.
“They don’t know what to do with these most vulnerable people,” said Orta, adding that immigrants face tough challenges. “Are you at risk of not being eligible for asylum? Or are you willing to risk waiting for an appointment?”
A farmer, there is no doubt that Vargas can prove that he fled Honduras with his family out of fear, the first requirement for U.S. entry to initiate a long-running legal process for safe evacuation. . His iPhone is filled with pictures of him lying in a hospital bed, meandering tubes, swollen face covered in bandages. On either side of his head are masses of scar tissue from a bullet that passed through his right check and exited the left side of his head. Similar scar tissue is dotted on his back and sides.
After his Title 42 expired and fellow asylum seekers in Tijuana’s asylum left their appointments, he was in high spirits. Two weeks later he was appalled.
“I can’t find enough jobs here. I have to go back to Honduras, but maybe I’ll be killed or I don’t know,” he said. “I feel very hopeless.”
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Salomon reported from Miami.
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