Online system for asylum seekers overloads

TIJUANA, Mexico — Hours before sunrise, migrants at one of Mexico’s largest shelters wake up and go online, hoping to secure an appointment to try to seek asylum in the U.S. The daily ritual resembles a race for concert tickets when online sales begin for a major act, as about 100 people glide their thumbs over phone screens.

New appointments are available each day at 6 a.m., but migrants find themselves stymied by error messages from the U.S. government’s CBPONE mobile app, which has been overloaded since the Biden administration introduced it Jan. 12.

Many can’t log in; others are able to enter their information and select a date, only to have the screen freeze at final confirmation. Some get a message saying they must be near a U.S. crossing despite being in Mexico’s largest border city.

At Embajadores de Jesus in Tijuana, only two of more than 1,000 migrants got appointments in the first two weeks, director Gustavo Banda said.

“We’re going to continue trying, but it’s a failure for us,” Erlin Rodriguez of Honduras said after another fruitless run at an appointment for him, his wife and their two children one Sunday before dawn. “There’s no hope.”

Mareni Montiel of Mexico was elated to select a date and time for her two children — then didn’t get a confirmation code. “Now I’m back to zero,” said Montiel, 32, who has been waiting four months at the shelter, where the sound of roosters fill the morning air at the end of a rough, dirt road.

CBPONE replaced an opaque patchwork of exemptions to a public health order known as Title 42, under which the U.S. government has denied migrants’ rights to claim asylum since March 2020. People who have come from other countries find themselves in Mexico waiting for an exemption or policy change — unless they try to cross illegally into the U.S.

If it succeeds, CBPONE could be used by asylum seekers even if Title 42 is lifted as a safe, orderly alternative to illegal entry, which reached the highest level recorded in the U.S. in December. It could also discourage large camps on Mexico’s side of the border, where migrants cling to unrealistic hopes.

The U.S. began blocking asylum-seekers under President Donald Trump on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19, but Title 42 is not applied uniformly, and many deemed vulnerable are exempted.