A complex period opens on the southern border of the United States in the face of new waves of migrants

The most powerful country in the world is preparing to confront the most vulnerable on Earth on its southern border.

The Departments of Homeland Security and Justice announced changes in the measures to control migration on the southern border that will be applied as of midnight this Thursday by suspending the so-called Title 42 of the law that allowed the immediate expulsion of applicants. of asylum and others who tried to cross without authorization under a sanitary justification of the pandemic, and the beginning of validity of the so-called Title 8.

This administration has led the largest expansion in decades of lawful avenues for protection, and this rule will encourage migrants to seek access to such processes rather than arrive illegally and at the mercy of smugglers at the southern border.assured the secretary of Internal Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, who warned that the next few days have the potential to be very complicated.

The measures, characterized as a multi-agency – including the Pentagon – and multi-country effort, include the eventual opening of some 100 processing centers for documented migration requests around the Western Hemisphere, and the 24,000 agents already deployed at the border, added to the arrival this Wednesday of 550 additional soldiers as part of the 1,500 troops deployed on the border, the opening of new detention centers, including for unaccompanied minor migrants, some 250 million dollars in additional assistance funds for border communities and improvements to the app for asylum applications.

Deterrence measures were also announced: warnings that if a migrant does not use the regular routes to enter the country, their asylum application will almost always be rejected; if he tries to cross without documents, his entry will be prohibited for years, and an expansion dramatic of deportation flights.

Cooperation with Mexico

Regarding the cooperation of Mexico, the declaration of Internal Security and Justice reiterates that redouble efforts bilateral meetings focused on the roots of migration from Central America and, at the same time, both countries intensify their joint efforts against migrant smugglers and their deceptions.

In recent hours, the US government has praised Mexican cooperation. We have obtained overwhelming cooperation from Mexicosaid President Joe Biden on Wednesday. A senior Biden government official added that in the telephone conversation between Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Biden on Tuesday, the government of Mexico has committed to conducting a fairly robust enforcement operation on its southern border and on transit (migratory) routes to its northern border.

For some observers in the United States, the concern about these measures is that legitimate asylum seekers could be denied that right. Biden’s measures they will consolidate a growing bipartisan rejection of asylum laws enacted in the 1980s to conform to international treaties designed to prevent nations from expelling refugees to countries where they could be persecuted, as the United States did to some Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.said Camilo Montoya-Galvez, a CBS News correspondent on the border.

Groups defending the rights of migrants and civil liberties had already condemned initial versions of these measures and the border control strategy, considering that they violated both national and international laws on the right to asylum and even for resuming some aspects of the anti-immigrant policies of the Donald Trump government.

The first objective of this migratory strategy is to deter and stop the unauthorized flow and border control. But the second objective is to respond and neutralize the Republican political offensive that accuses that under Biden and the Democrats, the southern border is open, thus inviting a invasion of migrants.

This same Thursday, the Republican majority of the lower house of the federal Congress will approve a new bill to resume construction of the border wall and expand the detention of migrant families who try to enter without documents and more reprisals against those who hire undocumented labor between other measures.

At the same time, a few days after several migrants were run over in Texas, the state lower house approved a bill to create groups of citizens with the right to persecute migrants they believe to be undocumented, that is, to authorize vigilantes to go after immigrants.