With swelling amount of Central Americans arriving in the US, officials are struggling with asylum seekers. They are aiming to more than quadruple the number of asylum seekers sent back over the southern border each day. According to a Trump administration official, it is the latest attempt to ease a straining immigration system that is at the breaking point.
Not just this, Iraqi and Bangladeshi immigrants have increased in numbers too. There are Chaldean Catholics fleeing persecution in Iraq and those from middle eastern countries like Syria too.
Hundreds of officers who usually screen cargo and vehicles at ports of entry were reassigned to help manage migrants. President Trump announced on Friday that he would consider closing the border along Mexico if the number of immigrants did not stop.
Officials are struggling to deal with the incoming numbers. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked for volunteers from non-immigration agencies within her department, sent a letter to Congress late this past week requesting resources and broader authority to deport families faster. She also met with the Central American and Mexican officials.
There is a backlog of more than 700,000 immigration cases. This leads asylum seekers to wait years for their cases to progress, and officials say some people game the system in order to live in the US.
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With Department of Homeland Security shifting 750 border personnel from ports of entry to help process asylum seekers who are turning up between official crossing points, traffic from Mexico could slowdown. The government really is struggling to deal with a surge of asylum seekers from countries in Central America who travel through Mexico.
Officials hope to have as many as 300 people returned per day by the end of the week, focusing particularly on those who come in between ports of entry, said the official.
But the process which has been slow, has already been marred by confusion. The sizeable increase in immigrants is adding to the glitches with attorneys not being able to reach their clients.
Arrests soared in February to a 12-year-high and more than half of those stopped arrived as families, many of them asylum seekers who generally turn themselves in instead of trying to elude capture.
Majority of the asylum seekers are now coming from Guatemala and Honduras. Migrants from Central America cannot be easily deported, unlike people crossing from Mexico.
Mexico has been treading lightly on the subject. After Trump lashed out, saying Mexico and the Central American nations were “doing nothing” about illegal immigration, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his country would do everything it could to help to maintain a “very respectful relationship” with the US government and Trump. Mexican foreign minister in the meantime, played down the possibility of a border shutdown “Mexico does not act on the basis of threats. We are a great neighbour,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said on Twitter.
But of course, a border-shutdown will have other effects. It will affect trade and tourism between US and Mexico which was worth $612 billion last year.
According to Nielsen, officials have been overwhelmed by the sudden increase in asylum seekers, many of them children and families who arrive in large groups fleeing violence and economic hardship in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. Neilson has also sent a letter to the heads of other agencies within her sprawling, 240,000-person department, asking for volunteers to help with border duties.
