The United States government expanded yesterday the areas in Mexico from where Mexicans and foreigners can register their asylum application through the CBP One digital application, in order to cross the border on a regular basis. Since the process began to operate through the App – in January 2023 – until Thursday, August 22, 2024, people could only request an appointment from northern and central Mexico, but since Friday, August 23, foreign migrants can also wait in Tabasco and Chiapas to get an appointment before traveling north, while Mexicans can stay anywhere in the country. “We believe it is good to decongest the places where people who want to request an appointment are waiting. Mexican citizens may have more opportunity to remain where they are while waiting for that appointment; having the opportunity to request that appointment from any point in Mexico, we believe is an important change,” said yesterday Luis Miranda, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Communications at the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Through a virtual press conference with the Chihuahua media, the federal official explained that the measure does not mean an increase in the daily allocation of appointments, which is currently 1,450 through eight border ports, but rather an expansion in the location from which to request the appointment. With the update, priority will also be given to those who have been waiting the longest. It was later reported that at this border the waiting time is up to nine months, although some have told El Diario that they have waited less than two months. Miranda reported that, since January 2023, more than 765 thousand people have been able to make an appointment thanks to the use of the CBP One App, to enter the United States regularly through an official port, although – without giving statistics – he indicated that not all people are accepted. According to DHS, all nationalities can request an appointment to enter the United States through a “safe, orderly and humane” legal process, thus discouraging attempts at irregular or illegal entry. Since Thursday, January 12, 2023, CBP One began generating appointments for migrants it detects geographically located in central or northern Mexico, and since Wednesday, January 18 of that same year, it has received groups of people daily. “There are rumors that we are going to stop using the App, it is false,” “thanks to the App we have the capacity to process with security measures at levels four, five times higher than what was possible in the pre-pandemic era,” Mirada said yesterday. He said that the update will help distribute the space so that people can wait for their appointment in other areas of the country. “With the App, not only is that appointment requested, but information is sent in advance of the individual or individuals who are going to come to the appointment, and that has the benefit that we can have information that allows us to advance, for example, in background investigations and other issues that help us to be more efficient at the time of the appointment,” he explained. According to CBP, in July it processed more than 38,000 individuals for appointments at ports of entry using advanced information submitted through CBP One and. Since the appointment scheduling feature was introduced in CBP One in January 2023 through the end of July 2024, more than 765,000 individuals have scheduled an appointment to appear through eight border ports located in El Paso; Eagle Pass, Hidalgo, Brownsville, and Laredo, in Texas; Calexico and San Ysidro, in California; and Nogales, in Arizona. The top nationalities processed post-arrival for their appointment are Venezuelan, Cuban, Mexican, and Haitian.
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