San Diego — The Joe Biden administration launched an online dating system Thursday for migrants seeking an exception to asylum limits imposed during the pandemic, the latest move by the U.S. government in the past eight days. to reform border surveillance.
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Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began allowing migrants to make appointments up to two weeks in advance through its website and through CBPOnea mobile app that the agency has used on a limited basis since 2020.
CBPOne is set to replace a series of unclear and heterogeneous exemptions to the public health order known as Title 42, under which the federal government has denied migrants their enshrined right under international and national law to seek asylum since March of 2020.
So far, the CPB has arranged exceptions through activists, churches, lawyers and migrant shelters, without publicly identifying them or saying how many places were available. Activists have chosen who enters the country and CBP makes the final decision.
With the new system, migrants apply directly to the agency. Appointments will take place at one of eight crossings: Brownsville, El Paso, Hidalgo and Laredo, in Texas; Nogales, Arizona; and Calexico and San Diego, in California.
The exceptions to Title 42 are directed at the most vulnerable migrants.
Thursday’s launch is separate from measures unveiled last week to expel migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to Mexico under Title 42 while allowing up to 30,000 migrants of those four nations are admitted to the United States each month on parolees of up to two years provided they apply online, cover the cost of their flight and have a financial sponsor.
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Although the government had previously indicated it would launch CBPOne for people seeking asylum at land border crossings with Mexico, the speed of the change caught activists by surprise.
“Absolute confusion,” said Priscilla Orta, an attorney with the Heart Project of the Lawyers for Good Government group in the Rio Grande Valley, Texas.
Federal officials informed the activists on Friday that they expected the app to be ready within a month, Orta said. Then, on Monday, they were told that the launch had been brought up to this week.
Under Title 42, the United States has carried out 2.5 million expulsions of migrants since March 2020 with the argument of preventing the spread of covid-19.
To be eligible for a waiver with CBPOne, migrants must have a physical or mental illness, disability, pregnancy, be homeless, face a threat of harm, or be under the age of 21 or over 70.
At the moment the government app is only available in English and Spanish and requires access to a smartphone, email and a reliable internet network.
US Representative Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., of Haitian descent, expressed concern that the app is not available in Haiti’s two main languages: Creole and French.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to specific questions about the implementation, but said that the application will be available to migrants in central and northern Mexico. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that the app allows people to “seek protection in a safe, orderly and humane manner, and strengthen the security of our borders.”
The launch is the latest effort by the administration to deal with an extraordinarily high number of migrants arriving at the southern border of the United States, many of whom are fleeing inequality and violence in their home countries. Federal authorities made 2.38 million immigration apprehensions during the fiscal year that ended on September 30, an increase of 37% from the 1.73 million in 2021, which was unusually hectic.
Savitri Arvey, a senior adviser at the Women’s Refugee Commission, said she had trouble explaining all the changes to migrants during a recent visit to Monterrey, Mexico.
“It was just impossible in the shelters,” he said Thursday. “We have this option for you, a Venezuelan, but not for you, a Central American,” he commented.
Some activists applauded the new system, noting that the old one was riddled with favoritism and prone to corruption. CBP began working with advocacy organizations to select Title 42 exemptions during the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Albert Rivera, director of the Ágape Misión Mundial shelter in Tijuana, said that before he did not have the contacts to help migrants receive exemptions, but a Mexican woman at his shelter was able to sign up Thursday for an appointment online with the new system.
“We are very excited,” Rivera said. “It was a monopoly.”
Last month, The Associated Press reported that Calvary Church in Chula Vista, a San Diego suburb, was receiving up to 40 waivers a day and handing them out to those who paid $1,800 per person or $3,500 for a married couple. Asylum must be free and for those most in need. Days after the AP story broke, the church-linked group that facilitated the exceptions, Most V USA, revealed that CBP chose to stop working with them.
CBP has been granting 180 exceptions a day in San Diego, said Enrique Lucero, municipal director of migrant services for the Tijuana, Mexico city council. El Paso, Texas is estimated to receive about 70 exceptions daily.
* Associated Press writers Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.
