US letting some from caravan seek asylum
TIJUANA, Mexico — For weeks, President Donald Trump has expressed alarm about a caravan of Central American migrants heading for the United States and vowed to keep them out. But on Tuesday, U.S. officials allowed a second group of the asylum seekers across the border, their fate now in the hands of immigration officials and judges.
By Tuesday morning, 14 of the 150 migrants had been escorted to the San Ysidro port of entry in San Diego to begin their asylum proceedings — what appeared to be a blow to Trump’s stern pledge to prevent them from reaching American soil. But the president’s supporters argued that he had successfully used the episode as punctuation in his fight against illegal immigration, even using the caravan as a reason to deploy extra National Guard troops along the border.
The United States receives thousands of people claiming asylum each month, but in Trump’s showdown with the caravan, the president attempted to turn its members — mostly women and children from places such as El Salvador and Honduras — into symbols of a weak American immigration system. Many of the migrants responded to the attention by sharing stories of the violence they said awaited them if they were sent home to countries bloodied by gang wars and crime. A girl who traveled with a caravan of Central American migrants awakens at a camp in Tijuana, Mexico, where the group is waiting for the chance to request asylum in the United States.
The U.S. government was obliged to grant the migrants asylum interviews under international treaties, but the arc of their cases is impossible to predict and the process could take months or even years.
“The administration seems to have responded vigorously enough to avoid sending the message that future efforts like this caravan will succeed,” said Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based policy group advocating for less immigration.
But Bryan Johnson, an immigration lawyer based in Bay Shore, New York, said government officials “think their words and rhetoric can deter people from coming here unlawfully. But the people who come aren’t going to be deterred. They don’t have a choice.”
The caravan set out from southern Mexico more than a month ago and initially numbered over 1,000 people. While other such groups have marched toward the U.S. border in the past without much attention, this one drew the ire of conservative media outlets and the Trump administration, which saw it as planning to flout U.S. immigration law.
The Trump administration has said that many asylum applicants disappear after being freed following their initial court dates, joining the millions of undocumented immigrants already in the country. Because most members of the Central
American caravan are families, they would typically be released with ankle bracelets to monitor their movement. With the enormous amount of attention on the caravan, however, some lawyers worried that these migrants could deported quickly.
Even as the administration allowed some members of the caravan to start applying for asylum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced criminal charges against 11 suspected members of the group for allegedly entering the country illegally. While the main caravan group is waiting to enter through the port of entry, a Justice Department statement said these migrants were picked up crossing into the country elsewhere along the border.