What is known about the first deportations

By Valerie Gonzalez and Elliot Spagat Associated Press

Abigail Castillo was about to cross the US border illegally when she heard President Joe Biden was halting asylum. Still, he continued to walk for hours through the mountains east of San Diego with his young son, hoping it wasn’t too late.

“I heard they’re going to do it or they’re about to finish it,” Castillo, 35, said Wednesday as she and her son were led into a border patrol car with about two dozen other people from Brazil, Ecuador and his hometown in Colombia. The southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, which he said he left because of the violence it is suffering from.

They missed the deadline and are now subject to the new deportation rule.

A sense of uncertainty prevailed among many migrants after Biden used presidential powers to halt the processing of asylum claims when arrests for illegal crossing exceeded 2,500 people a day. The measure went into effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday because that threshold had been met.

This was confirmed by two senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security The first deportations under the new rule were carried out on WednesdayAlthough they did not say how many people were deported. The officials spoke to reporters on condition that their names not be mentioned, according to regulations.

Carrying his child after a nearly two-month journey from Ecuador with his family and walking through the dangerous Darien region on the Colombia-Pama border, Sergio Franco said he was confident he would prevail in his appeal to find safe haven in the United States. States.

“As long as we have enough evidence, it won’t be a problem,” he commented as he got into the truck with Castillo and the others.

[Migrantes temen por su vida y su futuro ante las limitaciones al asilo ordenadas por Biden]

As the group drove away, several migrants from India approached the same dusty area near a gun store in the town of Dulzura, one of several that have sprung up in the past year in the remote rural suburbs of San Diego to surrender migrants to Border Patrol agents. There was no water or bathrooms and little shade.

Many Guatemalan women arrived later. Among them was Arelis Alonzo Lopez, who said she was about five months pregnant and walked for two nights. A Border Patrol agent asked him how he felt, and he replied that he couldn’t take it anymore.

Asylum remains suspended until average daily arrests fall below 1,500 for a week in a row. The last month in which crossings were this low for this period was July 2020, during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Migrants who express fear for their safety if deported will be evaluated by U.S. asylum officials, but to higher standards than currently in place. If they succeed, they can stay to seek other forms of humanitarian protection, including those provided for in the United Nations Convention against Torture.

There are serious doubts about whether the new measure will be able to stop the entry of migrants on a large scale. Mexico has agreed to readmit non-Mexican immigrants, but only in limited numbers and nationalities. The Biden administration does not have the money or diplomatic support it needs to deport migrants long distances, including to Ecuador and India.

In Matamoros, Mexico, which borders Brownsville, Texas, Esmeralda Castro, a native of El Salvador, feared that the asylum suspension would push more people to compete for the 1,450 opportunities a day given to enter legally through overloaded online applications from customs and excise. Bureau of Border Protection, known as CBP One, the 40-year-old said he tried for nine months to get an appointment using the app.

“Imagine what they did because the regime will collapse again,” Castro added, speaking at a migrant camp near the shore of the Rio Grande River where he lives with 10 other people. The app became so saturated at times that users received error messages and encountered other glitches.

Juan Daniel Medina, from the Dominican Republic, added that he was determined to keep trying using the CBP One app, even after eight months of failed attempts to get an appointment.

[“Esperemos en Dios que reflexione”, migrantes responden a acción ejecutiva de Biden]

“It’s the right way, because this way they make everything legal, they don’t have to jump in the river and they don’t have to press charges,” Medina, 30, said.

Two hours before sunset Tuesday in San Diego, Border Patrol agents dropped off four buses full of migrants at a transit center, so that most of the migrants could seek asylum in one of 68 immigration courts across the country. Asylum seekers are generally able to work while their proceedings move slowly through crowded immigration courts.

Jesús Gomez, a native of Medellín, Colombia, said Border Patrol agents told him he was one of the last people to be released to seek asylum, and that he should tell friends and family back home that they would be deported if they tried to re-enter illegally. He commented that he did not know if this was true.

“It’s a very difficult thing to deal with,” Gomez, 49, said as he waited for his wife to be released by Border Patrol and then fly to Boston, where his daughter lives.