California border has longest waits to request asylum

SAN DIEGO — The lines for asylum-seekers waiting to enter the U.S. at California ports of entry are the longest of any along the southwest border, according to a forthcoming report.

The new report — a partnership between the University of Texas at Austin Robert Strauss Center, the UC San Diego Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies and the Migration Policy Center — found disparate and often unclear methods for getting added to a wait list depending on where an asylum-seeker is hoping to cross the border.

“U.S. authorities have tried to push asylum-seekers to ports of entry,” said Savitri Arvey, a researcher at Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at UC San Diego. “When asylum-seekers show up to ports of entry to request asylum, the process is not that simple.”

Customs and Border Protection officials say the number of people they can take each day to begin the asylum process depends on how much space they have available in their holding cells.

Lawyers and advocates, on the other hand, have questioned the legality as well as the ethics of telling those who are ostensibly fleeing for their lives to wait in a country where they might still be in danger.

U.S. officials’ practice of “metering” or limiting the number of people seeking protection let in each day started in California before extending along the entire border. Such policies have led to wait lists, operated in some cities by Mexican officials and in others by non-government organizations. In Tijuana, migrants themselves manage the list in a notebook provided by Mexican officials to determine who will cross next to ask the U.S. for help.

The metering policy that has led to long lines is believed to cause more asylumseekers to try to cross into the U.S. illegally, according to a government watchdog report.

CBP countered that in order to balance resources among its responsibilities — including detecting drug smugglers and facilitating international trade — the agency has to limit how many asylum-seekers come in its doors at a time.

The number waiting to ask for help in San Diego grew to more than 5,100 since a migrant caravan arrived in November. Depending on the day, CBP officials in San Ysidro, where the asylum line forms, take in between 20 and 80 people per day.

Researchers estimate it would take about three months for those currently at the back of the line in Tijuana to make it to the front.

Kate Morrissey is a San Diego Union-Tribune writer.

Mauricio Lima / New York Times After her number was called, a Mexican woman seeking asylum in the United States presents documents with her son at the border crossing into San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico.