Officials: Border crossing is full; migrant caravan must wait
SAN DIEGO — A group of Central Americans who journeyed to the U.S. border in a caravan resolved to turn themselves in and ask for asylum Sunday in a direct challenge to the Trump administration — only to have U.S. immigration officials announce that the San Diego crossing was already at capacity and couldn’t immediately accept them.
Nearly 200 migrants, many traveling with children, had decided to apply for protection at the crossing at San Diego, organizers said.
But even before the migrants arrived, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection said the crossing can take in additional people only as space and resources become available. The agency has said the port can hold about 300 people temporarily.
The migrants made their way northward by foot, freight train and bus over the past month, many of them saying they feared for their lives in their home countries.
The Trump administration has been tracking the caravan, calling it a threat to the United States since it started in Mexico on March 25 near the Guatemala border. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system.”
Administration officials have railed against what they call America’s “catch and release” policies that allow people requesting asylum to be released from custody into the U.S. while their claims make their way through the courts, a process that can last a year.
Earlier Sunday, the migrants boarded five old school buses to attend a rally at a Pacific Ocean beach, with supporters gathering on both sides of the border fence and some climbing the barrier to sit or to wave signs.
Asylum seekers are typically held for up to three days at the border and then turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If they pass an asylum officer’s initial screening, they may be detained or released into the U.S. with ankle monitors. A man holding a child looks through the U.S. border fence from Tijuana, Mexico, where he, as a member of a Central American migrant caravan, arrived on Sunday.
Maria de Los Angeles, 17, said she felt confident after speaking with an attorney that U.S. authorities would release her while her case wends its way through the courts because she was traveling alone with her 1-year-old son. She hoped to move in with a sister in San Francisco.
“I’m fired up to go because I believe in God and I believe everything will work out,” she said.
She said she fled her home in Jutiapa, Honduras, because the father of her son threatened to kill her and their child.