EL PASO, Texas – Seventeen-year-old Karina Parababire gently rocked her three-month-old daughter as they waited in a migrant shelter for a bus ride to Chicago Friday night.
“I want my daughter to have everything I didn’t have,” said Parababire, who completed the extremely perilous route of the Darien Gap during pregnancy, said in Spanish.
The Venezuelan woman, traveling with her family, had to stop in Honduras to give birth to her daughter Avis before continuing on to the U.S. Once in Mexico, she and her family were granted an appointment through the CBP One app – a tool the Biden administration is using to allow migrants to meet with an asylum officer.
She and her family stayed at the Sacred Heart Church shelter for four days. They were going to Chicago where they would meet her cousin. Parababire hopes that once she arrives in the Windy City, she will be able to go back to high school and possibly go to college.
Parababire and her relatives arrived in the US shortly before President Joe Biden issued an implementing regulation which partially bans asylum applications if unauthorized border crossings exceed a certain daily limit. Because the family was allowed to enter using the CBP One app, they were allowed to continue their journey.
As for other migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border, local politicians said this week they expected the order to have some positive impact on curbing unauthorized border crossings, but there was also plenty of skepticism.
Immigration advocates expressed deep concern that the order – which came after Congress failed to pass comprehensive immigration legislation – would cause even more harm to people already at risk.
“I came here today to do what Republicans in Congress don’t want to do: take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said in announcing the order, referring to a bipartisan border security agreement that Republicans withdrew from earlier this year. “This action will help us regain control of our border.”
Uncertainty about a fresh policy
The Sacred Heart Church shelter where Parababire was housed currently has relatively few migrants – about 70 compared to a capacity of 120.
Director Michael DeBruhl said it was unclear what impact the order would have on the number of migrants arriving not only at the shelter but also at the many ports of entry along the southern border.
“The brunt of this regulation will be borne by the border police, as they will have to process every case,” he said. “The difference will be that there will be nuances in how each asylum application can be made. Therefore, it will be more difficult for you to apply for asylum.”
The large question, says DeBruhl, “is how exactly they do it.”
“You’re going to have all these border patrol agents making these decisions, all these nuances of a policy that was just implemented,” he said.
A Customs and Border Protection official declined to comment on the impact of the fresh regulation, but noted that it will change the way noncitizens enter the country at the southern border.
Local officials saw some positive aspects. “It’s a start, but it’s just the beginning,” El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser told reporters on Wednesday during a meeting with local border officials.
Leeser was one of many Texas mayors who attended the announcement of the last week’s implementing regulation.
Leeser said he was confident the order would stop unauthorized border crossings because “the consequences are more severe now and that’s the difference.”
Presidential campaign
The order, which represents Biden’s most drastic crackdown on immigration during his term in office, comes five months before a presidential election that will be a most essential issue for voters and for his Republican rival, former President Donald Trump.
The order is currently in effect because the number of unauthorized border crossings at the southern border has reached the threshold of more than 2,500 encounters with migrants per day for the past week.
“Simply put, the Departments do not have the resources and tools necessary to make timely decisions and determine consequences for individuals who cross the border illegally and cannot demonstrate legal grounds to remain in the United States. Nor can they provide timely protection to those who are ultimately determined to be eligible for protection when the number of arrivals increases at such high, historic rates,” according to the text of the provisional final arrangements in the Implementing Regulation.
The order will be lifted once government officials determine that fewer than 1,500 people have crossed the border per day for a week. Unaccompanied children are exempt, as are victims of human trafficking, people with visas, people with medical emergencies or those reporting stern threats to their lives.
Those migrants who arrive at ports of entry to seek asylum after the cap is reached and do not demonstrate a “reasonable likelihood of persecution or torture in the country of deportation” will be deported and face a five-year ban on seeking asylum in the United States. said the Ministry of Homeland Security.
Return to Mexico or home countries
Leeser said the order will aid address the high number of migrant arrivals at ports of entry because it will allow the Biden administration to send those migrants back to either their home countries or other locations in Mexico if their home country is deemed too perilous.
For that reason, he expects migrants to employ more legal avenues, such as the CBP One app, which allows them to schedule appointments with an immigration officer to apply for asylum, Leeser said.
The CPB One app processes more than 1,400 migrants daily for appointments with an immigration officer. The wait time for an appointment can be May report from the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin, which documents asylum applications at ports of entry.
But Juan Acereto Cervera, adviser to the mayor of the Mexican city of Juárez, which borders El Paso, expressed skepticism that the White House’s fresh policy would deter people from crossing the border to seek asylum.
“Nothing will stop this migration,” he said. “It’s because something is happening in their other countries that is making these people find the best country in the world, which is the United States. That’s the truth.”
Jorge Rodriguez, coordinator of the City and County of El Paso Emergency Management Office, said it is normal for the number of migrants arriving in El Paso to fluctuate due to changes in White House immigration policy.
“Over time … we will see what the ultimate impact will be,” he said.
Legal action threatened
Under U.S. immigration law, to apply for asylum, a noncitizen must set foot on American soil and then apply. They can stay in the U.S. and receive due process if they fear persecution because of their “race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been at the forefront of many lawsuits challenging the Trump administration’s immigration policies, including those restricting asylum, has already declared She plans to sue the Biden administration over its executive order.
Democratic U.S. Representative Veronica Escobar, whose district includes El Paso, expressed disappointment in a statement that the Biden administration had focused only on enforcement in its executive order.
“I sincerely hope that there will also be administrative measures to facilitate immigration, such as parole for spouses of U.S. citizens and granting temporary protected status to vulnerable populations,” she said.
“A very dangerous place”
Immigration advocates and lawyers in El Paso said during a separate panel discussion with reporters on Wednesday that they were concerned about the impact the executive order could have on migrants.
“I think we know roughly what’s going to happen – there’s going to be a backlog,” said Imelda Maynard, an attorney at Estrella Del Paso Legal Aid.
Maynard said she could well imagine the order being misunderstood by migrants who think the 2,500 threshold is a quota to allow people to enter the United States.
“The government is trying to reduce the number of illegal entries. I think the number will increase,” she said.
Father Rafael Garcia, a priest of the Sacred Heart Church, believes the decree will result in more migrants having to wait in Mexico. This could be a burden on Mexico and put the migrants in perilous situations.
“It’s hard to say how this will turn out, but it doesn’t look too good,” Garcia said.
Sacred Heart Church director DeBruhl said he believes it will take several weeks for the full impact of the ordinance to become apparent.
“The Conservatives say it will make no difference … the [Biden] The government says this is a specific [effect]and it’s going to be pretty impactful,” he said. “I don’t think anyone really knows how this is going to turn out.”
Aimée Santillán, a policy analyst at the Hope Border Institute, which advocates for solidarity and justice in border areas, said the order would force many migrants to wait in Mexico and that “Mexico is a very dangerous place for migrants right now.”
“We believe this could exacerbate the situation or push people to find other ways into the country that are less controlled, offer fewer services and where there are fewer people to receive them and provide them with assistance,” she said.
This story was reported as part of an El Paso-based fellowship on U.S. immigration policy organized by Poynter, a professional development institute for journalists, and funded by the Catena Foundation.
