Security measures demanded before the start of CBP One in Tabasco and Chiapas

The expansion of the appointment system to request asylum through the CBP One application in Tabasco and Chiapas starting this Friday requires a “comprehensive intervention to reduce violence” in the latter entity, which has been experiencing armed attacks between criminal groups for days. Otherwise, “the lives and safety of thousands” of them will be put at imminent risk, warned more than fifty organizations defending the human rights of this population.

Before this change, people on the move seeking to cross the border with the United States could only schedule an appointment from Mexico City to the north, but now they will be able to do so from those two southern states of the country, where they will be able to remain while waiting for their appointment without having to continue their journey to obtain one of the 1,450 appointments available daily.

The measure satisfies Mexico’s request, as last June Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena revealed that the national government asked its U.S. counterpart to geolocate the application to the southern border.

The Institute for Women in Migration, the Documentation Network of Migrant Defense Organizations, the Mountain Human Rights Center-Tlachinollan and Asylum Access Mexico, asked the Mexican government to create more safe accommodations in areas where there is geolocation so that migrants can reside temporarily in decent conditions while they wait for their appointment.

In a public letter addressed to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the Ministries of the Interior and Foreign Affairs, they demanded that the right to free movement of persons within the national territory registered in the CBP One application or with an appointment be respected, as well as access to air and land transportation “without discrimination and administrative obstacles,” so that they can present themselves at one of the eight ports of entry in the United States.

They also requested that a decree be issued prohibiting “accommodation” in immigration stations, “humanitarian rescue” for immigration control purposes or deportation of said population. This notice “must be disseminated and socialized” with all personnel of the National Migration Institute and its Representative Offices, as well as officers of the National Guard.

The organizations also demanded that the corresponding immigration documentation be issued in accordance with the times and procedures established in the current legal framework for the CBP One user population.

In this regard, they expressed their concern because since December 2022, the INM has stopped issuing Multiple Migratory Forms to the population in transit, and since October 2023, the institute “has refused to issue immigration documentation” to asylum seekers and refugees, despite it being their right under the law.

In the document, the migrant defense organizations recalled that people from other countries who seek to reach the United States through CBP One have suffered “kidnappings, sexual abuse, torture, and extortion at the hands of organized crime and abuses by INM and National Guard officials.”

They have even warned of cases of people registered on the app or with appointments already scheduled who “have been deprived of their liberty at immigration stations and returned to the south of the country” to prevent them from showing up at U.S. ports of entry.

The organizations, which also include the Latin American Block on Migration, the Shelter, Training and Empowerment Center for Migrant and Refugee Women and Families (CAFEMIN) and the Alaíde Foppa Legal Clinic for Refugees of the Migration Affairs Program of the Ibero-American University, pointed out that the CBP One appointment system, which is currently one of the only ways to access the United States territory through its southern border to begin the asylum application process, is a violation of international refugee law.

Through this mechanism, “the United States limits access to its territory for people in need of international protection, limits the number of asylum applications it is obliged to process on an individual basis, excludes people in need of international protection who do not speak one of the three languages ​​of the application, and forces people in vulnerable situations to wait in places where their lives and integrity may be in danger.”

Since its launch in January 2023 through July 2024, the requirement to use the CBP One app in Mexico to apply for asylum has forced more than 765,000 people to remain stranded while they await approval of their appointments, they said.