More troops at border as ruling looms United States
The US government is sending 160 military police and engineers to two official border crossings to deal with asylum seekers in case a federal appeals court strikes down one of the Trump administration’s key policies.
Senior Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials said active duty personnel would be in place by today at ports of entry in El Paso and San Diego. They would also send aviation support.
The deployment is in response to a crowd of asylum seekers that gathered at an El Paso crossing last weekend after the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily struck down the programme known as ‘‘Remain In Mexico’’, which forces asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases wind through the courts in the US. Officials shut down the crossing for several hours before the court reversed itself.
On Thursday, the court again made a decision on the case, this time blocking the programme in
Arizona and California, the two border states under its authority.
About 60,000 asylum seekers have been returned to Mexico while awaiting their immigration hearings in the US.
It is unclear why the government is sending military police to El Paso, which isn’t subject to the current injunction blocking the programme. A senior official said military personnel could be moved to different ports of entry in response to shifting needs.
Critics call the programme inhumane and dangerous, forcing vulnerable people to wait in Mexican border cities with high crime rates, where they are often subjected to violence, extortion and kidnapping.
But Remain In Mexico, which the government calls the Migrant Protection Protocols, has been one of the most successful tools in the administration’s battle to stem the large number of asylum seekers looking for refuge in the US.
The Trump administration is asking the US Supreme Court, which has consistently ruled in the administration’s favour on immigration policies, to intervene, and wants the policy to stay in effect until next week to give the high court time to decide.
In the meantime, authorities say they are preparing for more large groups of asylum seekers in case the appeals court strikes down the policy.
Seeking asylum at ports of entry is legal, but the US government has gone to great lengths to prevent migrants from doing so, including a ‘‘metering’’ policy that requires asylum seekers to wait on an unofficial list for months before they are even allowed to walk up to a US agent and seek protection.
Officials who provided the information provided few details about what exactly the military police would be doing, but did say that they would not be conducting immigration enforcement.
The US Department of Defence said the troops would place temporary barriers to restrict access through ports of entry, and provide protection for CBP personnel. The CBP said the deployment was scheduled to last two weeks but could be extended.
Since Remain In Mexico began a year ago, US officials have increasingly fortified the El Paso Paso Del Norte bridge. Rolls of razor wire and concrete barriers have been a regular fixture for months, drawing the ire of local business leaders, who say it turns off Mexican shoppers and visitors who keep El Paso’s economy afloat.