Haitians seek entry into U.S.
Many men, women and children have been arriving at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in recent days.
More than 200 people have arrived at the San Ysidro Port of Entry.
Surging numbers of Haitians and migrants from other countries have been arriving at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in recent days, hoping for admission to the United States.
More than 200 men, women and children were huddled together inside the port’s pedestrian entrance Thursday, sleeping under blankets on the tile floor as they awaited processing by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Outside the facility in Tijuana, about two dozen people seeking U.S. entry had gathered — a group that included Haitians, Mexicans and Congolese.
One, who gave his first name as Cedric, said he was a 25-year-old mechanic from the Haitian capital of Portau-Prince who had been working in Brazil. “I have left my country to look for a better life, like a lot of people,” he said in French. He did not provide details as to how he had arrived at the border, except to say that he flew into Tijuana.
Another man, who did not give his name, said in broken Portuguese and Haitian Creole that he had left Haiti in 2013 for work in Brazil. To get to the San Ysidro border, he said, he crossed through several countries, including Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico. He said he was not seeking political asylum but was searching for a better life.
U.S. officials do not authorize interviews or photographs inside the port of entry, where inspectors on average process close to 25,000 northbound pedestrians a day. A statement issued by Customs and Border Protection said that “recently, we have seen an uptick in the number of Haitians arriving at San Ysidro with no status in the United States.” Though asylum-seekers routinely present themselves to authorities at U.S. ports of entry, the reasons for the recent increase were not clear.
The Haitians “are being processed on a case-by-case basis,” according to the statement. After that, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes a determination on admissibility into the United States.
Haitians traditionally have crossed to South Florida by boat, risking treacherous waters to get to the United States. Often they are intercepted by the Coast Guard and returned home. “Very few Haitians make it to dry land,” said Cheryl Little, a Miami immigration attorney.
Brazil welcomed large numbers of Haitians after an earthquake devastated the island nation in 2010. But some have been leaving after encountering hard times in Brazil, Little said. The South American country is enduring one of its deepest recessions in years.
In Tijuana, merchants near the border crossing said they began seeing a significant surge in the number of migrants walking up to the port without immigration documents last weekend. “There have been so many people, since Sunday,” said Yuleni Perez, who sells newspapers. “There are some that don’t even have a blanket to cover themselves.”
The head of the Tijuana office of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, Rodulfo Figueroa, said that some migrants claim to be from nonEuropean countries in Asia and Africa with whom Mexico has no diplomatic relations, and thus cannot be deported.
In those cases, the migrants typically are released from immigration custody and given a set period of time, often about 20 days, to leave Mexico or else legalize their status through a political asylum application or other means.
Figueroa could not say whether the migrants were arriving on their own or through smugglers. “It’s a mixed bag. I’m sure some are connected to smuggling networks, but some are not,” he said.
The crowding at the San Ysidro Port of Entry, he said, was the result of U.S. Customs and Border Protection receiving more asylum requests than it can process in a short time. In the meantime, migrant shelters, the Tijuana city government and Mexico’s federal migrant protection unit, Grupo Beta, have offered assistance.
“Some of them don’t want to move because they don’t want to lose their place in line,” Figueroa said.
U.S. officials are using the old customs facility at San Ysidro to process the migrants, said Jackie Wasiluk, a Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman. In the interim, Mexicans and other tourists needing an I-94 form — for U.S. visitors who are traveling more than 25 miles from the border — are temporarily being directed to the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, she said.
After an initial processing, ICE officers from the agency’s Enforcement Removal and Operations division “are responsible for determining whether [the migrants] will remain detained or released while their immigration cases undergo further review by the immigration courts,” ICE spokeswoman Lauren Mack said.