It is always the best of times and the worst of times in America for President Donald Trump. Various things have simultaneously never been worse, owing to Democratic meddling, but also never been better, thanks to his own intervention. “Our country has a hole, nobody sees anything like it, but we’ve stopped them,” he said at a raucous rally in Orlando, Florida, to launch his re-election campaign on June 18th. “Thanks to Democrat policies, schoolchildren across the country are being threatened by the vicious gang ms-13 that ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], by the way, is taking out of the country and dropping them back home by the thousands.” Another problem solved.
Meanwhile in the real world American border police apprehended 132,887 migrants in May, the most recent month for which data has been officially released. That is the highest recorded number in 13 years, and a ninefold increase from May 2017, when border arrests were at the lowest levels in nearly 50 years. Preliminary data collected by the us Customs and Border Protection agency and released by the Mexican government suggests that arrests declined by 30% in June to 95,000.
That decline might be owing to a deal cut with the Mexican government after Mr Trump threatened to impose tariffs unless the migration surge subsided. It might be owing to the heat, since fewer cross the desert in summer. Yet this is still more than double the number of people detained the previous June. An unusually large share of recent arrivals are children. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a think-tank, more than half of those arriving at the border are coming as families, and 9% are unaccompanied children.
This all presents a problem for American authorities. After they are apprehended, migrants are processed in facilities run by the Customs and Border Patrol. They are not supposed to stay there for longer than three days. Adults and children who arrived with their parents or guardians are then dispatched to facilities run by ice until a hearing can be held. Unaccompanied children are supposed to be cared for by a separate agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (hhs).
At least that is how it is meant to work. In fact just 424 judges nationwide hear these cases. There are 892,517 cases outstanding, says trac, a research outfit at Syracuse University, and hundreds of thousands more are pending. This logjam creates a problem across the country. Hearing dates in New York City, an especially overburdened court system, are being set for August 2023. The backlog of cases and the unexpected migration surge has filled both ice and hhs facilities to overflowing.
Immigration detention centres were built to handle single adult men, not to house families and children. Partly because of this the Border Patrol is not releasing detainees to these longer-term facilities. A doctor visiting detained children reported that they had not been given toothpaste or soap and were being kept in freezing rooms where the lights were kept on for 24 hours. She visited facilities in the Texas towns of Clint and McAllen encountered babies who were sick and losing weight and described the conditions as comparable to “torture facilities”.
The Border Patrol has insisted that reports of deplorable conditions for migrants were exaggerated. That was then contradicted by another report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector-general. It found detainees were being kept in overcrowded conditions for much longer than three days. Many children had been held longer than a week; most of the facilities visited by government inspectors did not give children showers and little access to fresh clothing. They were not fed hot food. Some adults were being held in standing-room-only conditions for as long as a week. Detainees had started to clog their toilets with blankets so they could at least leave their confinement while the pipes were unblocked. They pressed notes to the windows as the inspectors passed by, including one on a piece of cardboard, saying “help 40 day here”.
Congress has had to scramble to respond. By June 26th both the Republican-led Senate and the Democratic-led House had agreed to the figure requested by immigration agencies—$4.6bn for emergency humanitarian spending. But they differed on how it ought to be spent. The House version of the funding bill had more restrictions aimed at preventing the administration from using the money to round up more migrants. After moderate Democrats revolted, Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, had to concede defeat and pass the Senate bill over the howls of the party’s Hispanic caucus. Then a delegation from the caucus managed to tour two of the customs and border facilities. They described sordid conditions. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York, says she encountered women sobbing “out of fear of being punished, out of sickness, out of desperation, lack of sleep, trauma, despair”. The Hispanic caucus described the border-funding bill as “a betrayal of our American values”.
Embarrassing as this was for Ms Pelosi, the emergency funding is a temporary reprieve for a recurring problem. Mr Trump’s administration has tried various methods to quell the influx. First, the short-lived practice of deterring family migration by separating children from their parents; now other tactics designed to scare off potential migrants and the strong-arming of the Mexican government into detaining many more central Americans on their way to the United States.
At the same time, prospective challengers vying to be the Democratic presidential nominee are adopting ever-leftier ideas. Several Democratic contenders have recently embraced decriminalising border crossing, a position held by Julián Castro, a former federal housing secretary and primary candidate. Cory Booker, a senator from New Jersey, says he would like to “virtually eliminate” immigrant detention and wrote that America must guarantee hormone therapy for detained transgender migrants who seek asylum.
As Mr Trump’s election showed, sympathy for migrants at the southern border ebbs and flows, but there is always demand for draconian border enforcement. Democrats need to tread carefully. ◼
WASHINGTON/TIJUANA, Mexico - President Donald Trump is likely to give U.S. troops authority to protect immigration agents stationed along the U.S. border with Mexico if they come under threat from migrants seeking to cross into the United States, a U.S. official said on Monday.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Special Response Team (SRT) officers are seen through concertina wire at the San Ysidro Port of Entry after the land border crossing was temporarily closed to traffic in Tijuana, Mexico November 19, 2018. REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Ahead of U.S. congressional elections earlier this month, Trump denounced the approach of a caravan of migrants as an “invasion” that threatened American national security, and he sent thousands of U.S. troops to the border to help secure it.
Currently, the troops do not have authority to protect U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel. The new authority could be announced on Tuesday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
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U.S. officials briefly closed the busiest border crossing from Mexico early on Monday to add concrete barricades and razor wire amid concerns some of the thousands of Central American migrants at the border could try to rush the crossing.
Northbound lanes at the San Ysidro crossing from Tijuana to San Diego, California, were temporarily closed “to position additional port hardening materials,” a U.S. CBP spokesperson said.
A Department of Homeland Security official, who requested anonymity, told reporters on a conference call that U.S. officials had heard reports some migrants were intending to run through border crossings into California.
The closing was rare for the station, which is one of the busiest border crossings in the world with tens of thousands Mexicans heading every day into the United States to work or study.
“Today was a lost day of work. I already called my boss to tell her that everything was closed and I did not know what time I would be able to get in,” said Maria Gomez, a Mexican woman who crosses the border every day for work. “I cannot believe this is happening.”
Trump had remained mostly silent about the caravan since the Nov. 6 vote, but on Monday he posted a photo on Twitter showing a fence that runs from the beach in Tijuana into the ocean now covered with razor wire.
Critics charged that his talk of a migrant “invasion” was an effort to rouse his political base ahead of the elections.
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Officials have stressed that the 5,900 active-duty U.S. troops on the border are not there in a law enforcement capacity and that there are no plans for them to interact with migrants.
Instead, their mission is to lend support to the CBP, and they have been stringing up concertina wire and erecting temporary housing.
The commander of the mission told us at Reuters last week that the number of troops may have peaked, and he would soon look at whether to begin sending forces home or shifting some to new border positions.
About 6,000 Central Americans have reached the border cities of Tijuana and Mexicali, according to local officials. More bands of migrants are making their way toward Tijuana, with around 10,000 expected.
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Hundreds of local residents on Sunday massed at a monument in a wealthy neighborhood of Tijuana to protest the arrival of the migrants, with some carrying signs that said “Mexico first” and “No more migrants.”
Last month, thousands of Central American migrants began a long journey from Honduras through Mexico toward the United States to seek asylum.
Other bands of mostly Salvadorans followed, with a small group setting off on Sunday from San Salvador.
TIJUANA, Mexico/SAN YSIDRO, California - Some 140 Central American migrants waited anxiously on the Mexican side of the U.S. border on Tuesday following a second night in a makeshift camp, determined to remain until their asylum requests are processed after the first eight members of their caravan were let into the United States overnight.
Gathering people along the way, the caravan set off more than a month ago from southern Mexico on a 2,000-mile trek to the California border, drawing attention from American news media after President Donald Trump demanded such groups be denied entry and that stronger immigration laws be enacted.
Bundled in blankets and donated clothes to ward off the cold, the mood among the men, women and children camped in a square by the border crossing was muted. At night some had prayed, while others, trying in vain to sleep in the biting wind, worried about what was to come next. They relied on donations of oranges and sandwiches for food.
“I’m preoccupied, anxious,” said Reina Isabel Rodriguez from Honduras, lowering her voice so as to not be overheard by two grandsons, ages 11 and 7, who she has looked after for years.
After meeting with attorneys advising the migrants, Rodriguez said she knew she likely would be separated from the two boys, the eldest of whom was abandoned by his mother after she was gang raped by members of the brutal Mara 18 crime group.
Alex Mensing, from the Pueblo Sin Fronteras transnational immigrant rights group that coordinated the caravan, urged U.S. authorities to respect the law and not separate family members.
On Monday evening, U.S. officials admitted eight women and children, bolstering the determination of others to remain at the border. This first group of migrants was expected to remain in detention for several days while their claims are processed.
Many of those from the caravan, including scores of children, fled gang violence and instability in Honduras, with most of the others from Guatemala and El Salvador.
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The U.S. Justice Department said it was moving ahead on the first prosecutions against what it called “suspected” members of the caravan. The department said it filed criminal charges against 11 migrants accused of entering the country illegally west of the San Ysidro, California, border crossing.
CRIMINAL CHARGES
Nicole Ramos, an attorney advising caravan members in Mexico, said she did not believe the 11 facing U.S. criminal charges were part of the caravan group. Six of those named by the Justice Department are Honduran, two from Guatemala, two from El Salvador and one from Mexico, according to court documents.
Several appeared in San Diego federal court on Monday and were provided attorneys. Representatives for the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Diego, and the federal defenders office, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Trump’s hard line against illegal immigration has been a centerpiece of his presidency, as he pursues an “America First” agenda that includes a proposed wall along the U.S.-Mexican border that he has said is needed to stem the flow of immigrants and drug trafficking.
Members of a caravan of migrants from Central America pray near the San Ysidro checkpoint after the first fellow migrants entered U.S. territory to seek asylum on Monday, at an improvised shelter in Tijuana, Mexico April 30, 2018. REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
The processing of undocumented arrivals restarted on Monday after delays over the weekend caused by the surge in migrants at the San Ysidro port of entry, the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) said.
While delays were expected to ease, an agency representative said some individuals “may need to wait in Mexico as CBP officers work to process those already within our facilities.”
On the asylum applicants, the Trump administration’s hands are tied by international rules obliging the United States to accept some applications. Most in the caravan said they were fleeing death threats, extortion and violence from powerful street gangs.
Dozens of members of the caravan had been sleeping out in the open for two nights before the arrival of the tents in the surroundings of the busy San Ysidro port of entry, after cheering the news late on Monday that CBP had opened the gate to the first eight.
The caravan swelled to 1,500 people at one point but has since dwindled as people left the group.
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“We crossed the whole of Mexico,” said Angel Caceres, who said he fled Honduras with his 5-year-old son after his brother and nephew were murdered and his mother beaten and raped. They would stay, he said, “until the last person is in, as long as it takes.”
It was not clear when more of the group would be allowed to make their asylum bids.
The majority of asylum claims by Central Americans are ultimately unsuccessful, resulting in detention and deportation. Asylum seekers must demonstrate a well-founded fear of persecution at home, most often from a state entity. Central Americans fare badly in such claims because the state is rarely seen as directly responsible for the life-threatening situations they leave behind.
