2024-04-09 07:45:00
A makeshift pile of colorful blankets and tarps lay in the desert about a mile north of the U.S.-Mexico border. Waiting here are immigrants from all over the world, most of whom sneak in through a gap where an 18-foot-high steel wall meets a rocky mountain, about an hour’s drive east of San Diego. Outside the desert town.
The camp is called Campo de Asilo, or Asylum Camp, and the name is hand-painted on a plywood sign illuminated with solar lights to make it easier for people arriving at night to identify it. The camp is run by an aid group and is a destination for migrants who plan to surrender to U.S. border agents and request asylum.
This simple request has become a major driving force behind record numbers of illegal immigrants in the Western world. People travel thousands of miles, mostly on foot, to rich countries’ land borders to request asylum, a legal protection for people facing persecution in their home countries.
It has also become a critical vulnerability for economic immigrants who are not threatened but simply want better job opportunities. Bizarre regulations and an overburdened processing system all but guarantee that these immigrants will get in, at least for a while.
The United States received a total of more than 920,000 asylum applications in fiscal year 2023, far exceeding the 76,000 applications in 2013. Because one application can cover multiple members of a family, the actual number of asylum seekers is higher than these application numbers.
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Family groups accounted for about half of the roughly 2 million people U.S. border agencies encountered illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border last year, and these groups now almost always apply for asylum. Another 500,000 people have entered through legal ports of entry, many using a smartphone app launched by the U.S. Border Patrol in January 2023 to schedule crossings and apply for asylum.
The surge in asylum applications is partly due to events such as the war in Ukraine, the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan, civil strife in Syria and the brutal rule of authoritarian regimes in Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Today, people are more mobile and sophisticated networks of smugglers are willing to transport people across borders. Now, tips on how to use this asylum law abound on social media.
U.S. law generally gives immigrants who can legitimately claim persecution the right to live and work in the United States while their cases are heard in court. With so many immigrants now arriving in the United States, the United States is no longer able to quickly review their cases at the border or in court. It now typically takes four years for an asylum case to be heard by the courts.
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Even if their applications are ultimately denied, immigrants have established roots in the United States, often have U.S.-citizen children, and are rarely deported due to expense and logistical difficulties. The immigrants were left in limbo, losing the right to work legally but not being deported.
But the path to legal immigration is increasingly difficult even for immigrants with high-tech skills, so asylum is seen by many as the most viable route into the United States. “If it’s not asylum, there are very, very few options,” said Rebecca Press, a New York immigration lawyer who frequently handles asylum cases.
Kevin Chiluisa, an Ecuadorian who crossed into Arizona in the desert last September, said he was not fleeing violence or oppression. He just wanted a better life than in a small town in the jungles of eastern Ecuador. Like many others, he was not asked why he was there when he turned himself in to U.S. Border Patrol agents, who treated him like an asylum seeker. He now lives in Chicago with a distant relative, working odd jobs while awaiting his first hearing in immigration court.
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He was unsure whether he qualified for asylum or whether he should appear in court. “They want to verify that what you’re saying is true,” he said of the hearing. “I don’t have that.” If he loses his immigration case, or decides to give up and never go to immigration court, he might consider simply integrating into the undocumented immigrant underworld and starting a new life.
The first major political issue
The sheer number of asylum seekers has overwhelmed U.S. courts, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the budgets of cities that offer asylum to migrants, putting immigration at the forefront of political debate and the upcoming U.S. presidential election.
A national poll conducted in late February by The Wall Street Journal found that 20% of voters now ranked immigration as their top concern, downgrading the economy, which topped the December survey.
Texas is already seeking to tighten controls on immigration at the border. Local legislation to arrest and deport illegal border crossers has been filed in federal court, plunging U.S. immigration policy into further chaos.
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This is a global problem. Europe has greater protections for asylum seekers than the United States. Last year, Europe received 1.14 million asylum seekers, the highest level since the Syrian civil war triggered a migration wave in 2016. This issue has contributed to the rise of far-right forces in various countries across the European continent. The UK spends an estimated $3.9 billion a year placing asylum seekers in hotels while they wait for courts to process their claims, which are overwhelmed by the volume of applications.
Germany received more than 330,000 asylum applications from the border last year, not including those from Ukraine, a number that increased by more than 70% from 2022. Asylum applications in Canada more than doubled last year to nearly 138,000. According to the latest available data, globally, the number of asylum applications registered by the United Nations in 2022 reached a record 2.6 million, an increase of 30% compared with before the new crown epidemic.
Countries are trying to find solutions. Italy recently struck a deal to keep asylum seekers in Albania while they wait for a decision. The UK, Denmark and Germany are all exploring ways to permanently resettle asylum seekers in third countries, including African countries.
Former Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said: “The original intention of this policy was to provide protection for people in need, but now it has become a pathway for immigration.” Among Western countries, Australia has the most aggressive stance on asylum seekers. tough.
Australia essentially suspended territorial asylum in 2013, when more than 20,000 people came to Australia in small boats and dozens died at sea. Refugees are still accepted, but only those who apply abroad and fly in. Now, small boats crossing the border illegally are stopped at sea and asylum seekers are sent to another country for resettlement, with Australia paying for their hosting. Even if their application is successful in court, these migrants are often not resettled in Australia. Within two years of the policy being implemented, no more asylum seekers were entering Australia by boat.
In the United States, there are now so many illegal immigrants seeking asylum that the Border Patrol rarely asks immigrants whether they are here for this reason. They simply direct these people to wait in asylum camps set up by immigrant aid organizations such as Campo de Asilo, and then send them to Border Patrol stations to collect fingerprints and provide information for their first court appearance, and then return them to the aid organization or a nearby bus station.
On a recent morning at the Asilo asylum camp, about 100 people from countries including Ecuador, Vietnam and Turkey braved the early morning cold to wait for Border Patrol agents to pick them up. In the camp built on the rocky ground, the migrants stood together in groups of twos and threes, queuing up to receive snacks and drinks distributed by volunteer aid workers. Border Patrol arrived hours later and directed the migrants on foot to a nearby road, where a bus was waiting to take them away from the border.
Nearly everyone at this camp and a similar one nearby said they learned they should seek asylum from social media posts by migrants who came before them.
Sardor, a 27-year-old Russian man, said he learned about asylum information from posts on Telegram. Sebastian Fernandez, a 19-year-old from Ecuador, said he saw online posts and news reports explaining that he could “find help” at the U.S. border. He said he hoped to go to New York, where one of his brothers lived.
Yacoubou Ismael, a 35-year-old man from Benin, said he traveled to many countries after seeing posts from other immigrants about entering the United States to request asylum. Over the course of a month, he traveled first to Greece, then to Latin America and finally north through Mexico. “The journey has been difficult, but the United States has always been my goal,” Ismael said.
Refer to past experience
Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers believe the asylum system needs drastic reform, but have long failed to pass an immigration reform package. A recent proposal that would have brought about a fast-track asylum decision-making process and stricter preliminary reviews was killed in a Senate vote.
In the late 1940s, international law began to force governments to provide asylum to immigrants who were persecuted in their home countries or had well-founded fears of persecution in their home countries. Previously, many countries and regions had refused to shelter Jews fleeing the Nazi Holocaust.
Over the following decades, the United States accepted refugees through a series of policies that often targeted a single region, including admitting some 200,000 refugees fleeing communist countries in the 1950s.
In 1980, the United States passed the Refugee Act, which allowed the entry of no more than 50,000 refugees from around the world each year. A refugee is usually a person who has been determined by a court or expert to be eligible for asylum.
Cases are often dealt with while people are still overseas. Among the relevant figures, defectors, dissidents or refugees from places such as Vietnam or Cambodia who have been pre-screened and issued visas account for the majority.
In an era before mass transportation and instant communications, few could have imagined the prospect of large numbers of asylum seekers suddenly showing up at land borders without warning. Although the United States has caps on the number of refugees admitted, it still does not control the number of people who cross the border in person and claim asylum, and if someone arrives, the law requires that the case be heard.
Within a few months of the Refugee Act, the powerful Cuban dictator Fidel Castro announced that any Cuban who wished to go to the United States would be free to leave from Mariel Port. Some 125,000 people, including those released by Castro from prisons and mental hospitals, followed his advice, forcing the then-Carter administration to allow them in under a separate legal authority called a humanitarian exemption. .
“The paradox is that when we wrote the Refugee Act, we were looking back at past experience,” said Doris Meissner, who headed the US Immigration and Naturalization Service during the Clinton administration. , rather than looking ahead to what might happen and suddenly we realize, ‘Oh my gosh, this might involve more than just a small number of people’.”
Things started to change around 2014. The U.S. Border Patrol, accustomed to hunting down Mexican men who cross the border alone in search of work, suddenly begins encountering families from Central America who surrender to the Border Patrol and apply for asylum.
New waves of asylum seekers slowly emerge, driven by immigrant families telling others in their home countries that they have made it to the United States. The proliferation of smartphones has made it easier for immigrants to spread the word.
Popular social media accounts in the United States and Latin America promote asylum as an easy way to enter the United States and offer practical tips. “You have to write a good script,” one video said. “You must tell your story in chronological order, give dates and specific times, and explain clearly how the events that affected you happened in sequence. Many people will not remember it clearly if they are not prepared.”
The increasing use of asylum applications has overwhelmed the systems and made it almost impossible to process cases on the spot. Immigration officials at the border could screen arrivals to determine whether they have a credible fear of being deported to their home country and reject those who do not meet this requirement outright. Today, thousands of border encounters occur every day and only a few hundred are screened.
In fiscal year 2013, just over 80 percent of all border encounters ended in deportation. However, according to information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, as asylum applications increased, this proportion dropped to about 30% in 2019; 2019 is the latest year for which relevant data is available. The share of families deported within three years of first arriving at the border fell from 44% in 2013 to 6.2% in 2018, the most recent year for which data are available. Immigration experts say the ratio is likely even lower now.
Andrea Holguin, 33, was fed up with life in Venezuela and had difficulty supporting her daughters. In 2019, she left Venezuela for Ecuador, but the situation there was not much better. In August last year, she embarked on a journey to the United States, leaving her two daughters in the care of her parents.
She first had to cross Panama’s Darien Jungle, a dangerous, roadless wilderness that separates South America from Central and North America. According to Panamanian government data, the number of people crossing here rose from 559 in 2010 to 520,000 last year. Most are heading to the U.S. border.
Holguin then took a bus to Mexico City and eventually reached the border. There, she tried using the Border Patrol’s smartphone app, CBP One, which has 1,450 slots a day for would-be asylum seekers to make appointments to legally cross the border and be interviewed by officials about “credible grounds for fear.”
But after weeks of waiting, she ran out of money, so she gave up, crossed the border near El Paso, Texas, and turned herself in. She was housed in a large dormitory-style tent with other migrants. Immigration authorities collected her name, fingerprints and other biographical information, as well as a photo.
“When they took my fingerprints, an immigration officer asked me if I was pregnant and if I was allergic to any medications,” Holguin said. “That’s all they asked.”
She signed some papers and was released. Within three days, she was on her way to reunite with her Venezuelan boyfriend in the Bronx, where she now lives. The two of them shared a small room for $800 a month, with a light bulb installed in the ceiling. The building was packed with other immigrants from Latin America.
On Friday, Holguin took the subway to her first hearing, where Immigration Judge Anna Diao explained the steps to seeking asylum to her and a group of immigrants. Holguin must now make her application in writing and come back for a longer hearing on her case in March next year.
“At that point you have to say, ‘I fled Venezuela,’ and why I sought asylum here,” Holguin said. “Obviously, as the judge said to us, we have to present evidence, provide witness testimony and some ability to It’s a helpful document.” It was a cold day and she was wearing only jeans and a white sweatshirt.
Holguin said she will describe how her daughter’s father in Venezuela physically abused her in her application and later in immigration court. She will also describe how pro-government supporters in Venezuela stoned her when she refused food boxes paid for by the government to get voters to the polls.
However, Holguin said she was worried that she would not be able to provide the evidence she needed to apply for asylum because her previous text messages and photos may no longer be there, and because people who knew about her situation were still in Venezuela.
Holguin said if she doesn’t get asylum, she will try to find another way to stay. “I will appeal and see if I can stay in another immigration status…not asylum, but something else.”
Cases that have been backlogged for many years
There are two ways to apply for asylum in the United States, and both are already overwhelming. People already in the United States, such as tourists or students, or immigrants using the CBP One smartphone app, can apply for “affirmative” asylum. They apply through the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which says its caseworkers have the capacity to handle 50,000 asylum cases a year. But the actual numbers far exceed this processing capability. In the fiscal year that ended in September last year, the U.S. government processed a total of 431,000 immigration cases.
People like Holguin who are caught crossing the border illegally enter the immigration court system, where they often apply for “defensive” asylum, so called because they use asylum as a means of preventing deportation. Their cases are sent to one of the Justice Department’s approximately 70 immigration courts, which handle asylum and other types of immigration cases. The system’s more than 700 immigration judges typically handle hundreds of cases each year.
About 465,000 immigrants filed new defensive asylum applications last year, part of a backlog of 3.4 million immigration cases, more than 1 million of which were asylum claims.
During the court process, applicants use whatever evidence they can gather to prove they face persecution in their home country, such as threatening text messages from the government or gangs, or even newspaper articles.
About one in five people win. But people who lose their cases rarely need to worry about deportation because deporting immigrants takes resources. Immigration agents must determine where the person lives, know when they will return home, bring agents with them and have firepower in case the person or their family resists. Such raids often trigger negative publicity and protests. Repatriation is usually by plane and is expensive. And some countries do not allow these people to return home. For example, Venezuela refuses to allow the United States to deport immigrants.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security states on its official website that noncitizens detected at the border who are not deported within 12 months are rarely deported thereafter.
Because of the rigidity of the system, asylum seekers who appear to have legitimate claims of persecution are forced to wait alongside economic immigration handlers.
Ibrahima Bah decided to flee Guinea after his in-laws took his daughter Assiatou for genital mutilation. The 7-year-old died in the process. Bah fears Assiatou’s twin sister Hadja will suffer the same fate, and that their sister Fatoumata will soon be forced to marry against her will.
Bah, his wife and two surviving daughters flew to Brazil and then drove across the Amazon, trudging through the Darien jungle and encountering corrupt police in Mexico. They arrived in the United States last September.
“I want my daughters to be protected,” he said. “Provide them with shelter and protection so that they can receive a better education and live a free life.”
The family attended a virtual preliminary hearing in immigration court. Bah did not yet have a work permit and the family slept in a room at his friend’s house. He said he’s eager for a judge to hear his case but doesn’t know how long it will take.
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