the new rule reduced illegal crossings from Mexico

2023-05-22 00:05:00

They fear further overcrowding at the border.

The tightening of immigration regulations by the White House significantly reduced illegal crossings between Mexico and the United Statesalthough the flow of people seeking to reach the border remained active, which threatens to worsen the situation in the camps that are already “exceeded in their maximum capacity”, Télam was alerted by analysts in the area.

On May 12, Title 42 expired.a regulation introduced by the Government of Donald Trump during the pandemic to expel, through an express procedure and with the excuse of the coronavirus, those people who crossed without papers.

To replace it, Washington has revived Title 8, a decades-old regulation that imposes more serious consequences on those who cross the border illegally.

Under this norm, irregular migrants, instead of being expelled they will be deported and face penalties including a five-year ban on returning, as well as possible criminal charges if it is not their first attempt.

“What has not stopped are the flows in transit from Guatemala, to the south of Mexico, to the north of the country. People continue to move, the shelters on the route and on the northern border, for the most part, continue to exceed their capacity maximum”

“We have not seen (illegal) crossings again after May 11,” the coordinator of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Laura Gómez Mantilla told this agencywho oscillates between the Mexican border towns of Reynosa and Matamoros assisting people who are waiting in shelters or who are camping on the street, in vacant lots, or on the banks of the Rio Grande.

This observation agrees with the statistics given by the US Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who spoke of a 50% drop in crossings in the first days after the end of Title 42.

According to Gómez Mantilla, a Colombian political scientist specializing in international relations and humanitarian aidBetween misinformation about the new regulations and fear of a five-year ban on returning to the United States, migrants abandoned, for now, massive attempts to cross the border.

For his part, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) It assesses that the migrant population at the border is waiting for what will happen with the regulatory changes that were introduced in the United States.

“It seems to be like a watching moment among a lot of the migrant population. Also considering that the changes that have taken place are quite complex. Several measures have been announced at the same time. But until people can understand exactly what this means, we are likely to see a relative lull in US-Mexico border crossings,” The deputy head of the organization in Mexico, Jeremy Mac Gillivray, told this agency.

The new rule reduced illegal crossings from Mexico into the United States.

But These obstacles do not discourage the caravans of people from different parts of South and Central America trying to reach the border in search of a more promising future.which threatens to worsen the situation in overcrowded shelters or informal camps.

“What has not stopped are the flows in transit from Guatemala, to the south of Mexico, to the north of the country. People continue to move, the shelters on the route and on the northern border, for the most part, continue to exceed their capacity maximum,” said the IOM executive.

Analysts consulted by Télam warned about the hardening of the immigration policy of the Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who appointed a former official of the penitentiary system to the front of the National Institute of Migration.

“The policy is to treat migrants as criminals. In Mexico, immigration stations are called detention centers. They are prisons for migrants” in which there is “terrible management,” Mexican analyst Carolina Aguilar Román, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, told Télam.

North of the border the US president, Joe Biden, presented himself in the campaign that brought him to the White House as “open and friendly in terms of migrationbut ultimately “followed the same practices as Trump,” he added.

Biden had promised to end Title 42 arguing that it is a measure that criminalizes. However, it took him three years to retire it and replaced it with the more aggressive Title 8.

How to cross according to the new regulations

The only legal ways to enter the United States are humanitarian visas, permits obtained at processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala, or having an appointment obtained through the CBP One mobile application to request asylum at the border.

But getting an appointment through the app is very difficult for various reasons. First of all, the quotas: there are 1,000 daily for eight crossing points, too little for the volume of people waiting in Mexican cities.

On the other handpeople need to have a relatively modern cell phone to upload their application and take a photo with the resolution required by the authoritiesadded to the fact that they need to be close to the border line and have access to the Internet.

But even assuming that these people, in a situation of extreme fragility, have a suitable telephone and Internet access, they still They must overcome an obstacle: the application “criminalizes based on a racial profile” when taking the photo, warned Aguilar Román.

The flow of people seeking to reach the border remained active.

“When you open the app, it shows you the face of a white woman, blonde hair, light eyes. It criminalizes skin tone. Because it is designed based on an algorithm that only recognizes light skin tones and light eyes and Anglo-Saxon features. So , Afro-descendant people and mestizo and indigenous people with darker skin tones, as they have difficulty uploading their photos. And if you can’t upload your photo, you can’t continue with the process,” explained the expert on immigration issues.

Another issue with the app is that it prioritizes unaccompanied minors.something that has led some people to fill out their applications separately, which ends up separating families, added the expert in Latin American migration to the United States.

Para Mac Gillivray, people will determine how to proceed as they learn about the consequences of irregular crossingshow effective is the CBP One application, and how real are the alternative measures announced by the United States Government.

“There are different measures for different nationalities that seem very positive to us, but for them to have an impact on the reduction of migratory flows they have to mean a real option for migrants,” he said, referring to the announcement about the creation of processing centers in different Latin American countries, as well as the creation of new permits for family reunification for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia and the modernization of those for Cuba and Haiti.