Migrants at border worry about caravan
Asylum seekers fear they’ ll be rejected along with other migrants
MATAMOROS, Mexico — Waiting on the southern end of a bridge that leads to the United States, Humberto Alvarez Gonzalez warily follows the progress of the caravan winding through Mexico with the goal of reaching the border.
Alvarez and about two dozen other people are waiting in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, because U.S. customs officers say there’s no space to process them.
Now, Alvarez, a 32-year-old from Cuba, is worried that large waves of migrants in a caravan still more than 800 miles away from the border might provoke the U.S. government to reject them altogether.
U.S. government officials say the bridges remain open to asylum seekers. But in South Texas, the busiest corridor for unauthorized border crossings, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stand at the center of bridges to check documents and stop most asylum seekers.
And in San Diego, people at the San Ysidro crossing wait more than a month, and volunteers operate an informal takea-number system to spare migrants from having to wait in line or sleep in the open. Inspectors there typically process about 100 claims a day.
“It’s not turning people away, it’s asking them to wait,” CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan said recently. “We are taking people in as we have capacity to do so.”
At the Texas bridge, security guards on the Mexican side hold back asylum seekers until U.S. border inspectors tell them how many people they will accept. Some days, five or 10 people are allowed. On other days, no one is.
Seeking asylum at a port of entry is legal under U.S. law, as government officials have reaffirmed this year. President Donald Trump has proposed banning people crossing illegally between ports of entry from claiming asylum.
The U.S. fielded nearly 332,000 asylum claims in 2017, nearly double that of two years earlier and the highest of any country in the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. And many asylum seekers wait for years to have their claims adjudicated.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled in June that fleeing gang or domestic violence would generally not be considered grounds for asylum, a decision that would affect many people’s claims.