Biden expelling asylum-seeking families
SAN DIEGO — The Biden administration has flown roughly 2,000 asylum seekers — all families with children — from Texas to San Diego and expelled them from the United States to Mexico without giving them a chance to request protection.
Tijuana has been receiving on average about 100 expelled people a day from the flights, according to the Mexican consulate in San Diego. Mexican immigration of ficials generally transport the families to migrant shelters. The primary shelter is currently filled with hundreds of parents and children.
The flights, which have not received much attention since they started in midmarch, mirrors strategies used by President Joe Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, to try to deter people from coming by putting those who do come in dif ficult situations in Mexico.
Biden criticized Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program that required asylum seekers to wait in border cities like Tijuana during their U.S. immigration court cases that would decide whether they qualified for protection, and his administration has actively worked to wind it down. Asylum seekers in the program repor ted being kidnapped and assaulted while waiting in northern Mexico, where migrants are often seen as vulnerable targets for cartels and other criminal organizations.
But the expulsion policy, which began under Trump during the pandemic and is known widely as Title 42, puts Central American asylum seekers in the same places that Remain in Mexico did, though without any access to request protection in the United States. There are no court hearings. There are no official steps that expelled migrants can take to begin the asylum screening process.
Both the Trump administration and the Biden administration have said Title 42 is necessary to minimize the amount of time that people spend in Border Patrol holding cells during the pandemic.
Biden has taken the additional step of flying some families to San Diego in order to expel them to a city they do not know that is hundreds of miles from where they crossed into the United States. That is in response to increased crossings, particularly in east Texas, where the corresponding Mexican state of Tamaulipas has refused to accept some families back, especially if they have young children.
The White House deferred to the Department of Homeland Security when asked to comment on the flights. DHS did not respond to a request for comment.
Some families that cross in that part of Texas are being released to loved ones in the United States because of the Tamaulipas policy. As word has spread that some are able to get in there, crossings increased in the Rio Grande Valley region, which was already historically a common crossing place.
The number of family members caught by Border Patrol last month, nearly 53,000, is just under the number apprehended in March 2019, according to data from Customs and Border Protection analyzed by The San Diego Union-tribune. More than half of the parents and children caught by Border Patrol so far this fiscal year crossed in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, which is responsible for roughly 15% of the U.s.-mexico border.
The overall number of apprehensions at the border was at a 20-year high for monthly arrivals in March, mostly because of an increase in single adults crossing, often multiple times. The number of unaccompanied children apprehended along the border was also the highest monthly total since CBP began tracking child crossings in fiscal 2010.
Just 2% of families caught crossing in March were apprehended by San Diego Border Patrol agents, so they are receiving busloads of migrants from Arizona and flights from Texas for processing. While asylum seekers on the buses from Arizona generally appear to be released into the United States, many on the flights end up expelled.
“The border is not open and CBP is still operating under Centers for Disease Control guidelines for the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Jeffery Stephenson, an agent and spokesman with the San Diego Sector of Border Patrol. “CBP is making every effort to remain within CDC guidelines and mitigate long periods of processing and holding to minimize potential exposure to our workforce, those in custody, and the community. Once processing is complete, these individuals will be expeditiously transferred out of CBP custody.”
On Thursday morning, a charter plane from Brownsville landed at San Diego International Airport and moved to the side of a runway, many parents could be seen carrying their children down the stairs and then boarding three waiting white prison buses.
One bus drove straight to the border. The other two appeared to exit for the Chula Vista Border Patrol station.
Many of the expelled families ended up at Templo Embajadores de Jesus, a shelter at a church in a canyon in Tijuana once known for housing Haitian migrants. Mexican immigration officials bring them to the shelter in packed vans ever y day.
When they arrive, Pastor Gustavo Banda Aceves gives an opening welcome. He often starts by asking, “Do you know what countr y you’re in?”
Many are surprised to find out that they’re in Tijuana. Sometimes they cry, Banda Aceves said.
On Thursday morning, his shelter was home to roughly 700 people — parents and their children who had been expelled from the flights — with just under 50 arriving in two Mexican immigration vans in the early afternoon and more expected before the day was over.
Even when his shelter has reached capacity, Banda Aceves said, if there are more people expelled that day, he agrees to take them because he doesn’t want them to end up on the street.