With the traffic of immigrants at double the usual rate and the measures of the pandemic that allowed them to be expelled about to expire, the president is preparing for a new crisis
In the early morning of June 24, “between 1,300 and 2,000 men attempted to scale the six to ten meter fences that separate Moroccan and Spanish territory,” according to Human Rights Watch. The worst avalanche of immigrants that Spain has suffered through the Melilla border is on any given day in El Paso, where last month the US immigration authorities intercepted an average of 2,500 people each day on the border with Mexico. The figure was already an increase over the previous one of 1,700, which in the coming weeks is expected to increase another 40%.
Wednesday expires the term that Justice gave the Biden Administration to stop applying title 42 of a law on public health and civil rights that Donald Trump began to use during the worst moments of the covid to justify the expulsion of immigrants without taking into account even count their applications for political asylum. It is estimated that close to two and a half million people were deported under this controversial chapter that is about to expire. The pandemic officially ended in April, according to the guidelines of the United States Center for Infectious Disease Control, but the Biden government has not been able to turn the page at the border.
A string of lawsuits and appeals throughout the country have had the authorities hanging over the abyss of the Rio Grande, where both live between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the president promised during the campaign to end this “inhumane” policy, considered one of the most abusive of the Trump government in terms of immigration. On the other hand, with the ticking of the clock, an authentic migratory crisis will explode in his face in the middle of Christmas. Biden has opted for a Solomonic solution: he will abide by the judge’s order to suspend it on Wednesday, but at the same time he has appealed the decision to reserve the right to use it in the next pandemic.
On the other side of the border, immigrants also have to choose between the least of the many evils they suffer. Eight days ago some 1,500 Nicaraguans rushed en masse through the corridor that connects the border between Ciudad Juárez, in Chihuahua, Mexico, and El Paso, in Texas. They got off buses guarded by the Aztec National Guard, which had just freed them from the clutches of the Durango cartel. The hitmen had intercepted the transports in which they were traveling from Mexico City to the border and diverted them to a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, where they were held hostage for a week until the Mexican military released them. “Imagine, 1,500 people in a single house!” Óscar Sánchez told the local press. “My body is full of bruises from the blows and kicks that the people above me gave me.” They stole their money, passports, mobile phones and everything they were carrying.
The Mexican military led them towards the border and advised them to turn themselves in to the US authorities to request asylum, but in that trouble they found another of Trump’s hindrances. The policy known as ‘Stay in Mexico’ requires them to wait on the Mexican side of the dangerous border strip until their application is approved. The process can take years, which has generated authentic city-camps where its inhabitants are exposed to robberies, rapes and all kinds of harassment on a daily basis.
I veto Nicaraguans
In addition, Mexico does not want Nicaraguans. His commitment is to stay only with the Mexicans and Central Americans of Honduras and El Salvador. In the last negotiation, it also accepted Venezuelans, but Nicaraguans, Cubans, Peruvians and any other nationality are not welcome, neither on one side nor on the other. Biden had also promised to end that policy and, contradictory as it may seem, he must have breathed when a Texas court decided to stop him on Thursday.
District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by Trump at the nomination of the Federalist Society, has issued an injunction to protect already overwhelmed Texas border cities, which will face an even greater onslaught if this euphemistically dubbed policy is ended. Migrant Protection Protocol. Biden had already won before the Supreme the right to reverse it in a tight 5-4 sentence, but at the same time the court sent the case back to the Amarillo judge to determine how it could be done in compliance with the administrative laws of the State . That is the legal loophole that has allowed Judge Kacsmaryk to determine that eliminating the “deterrent effect it has on illegal border crossings and the reduction of free asylum applications” would impose too high a cost for border cities.
The judge is a character known for draconian sentences that attack contraceptives, but the anger over the border crisis is not limited to the most conservative. In fact, the Democratic mayor of El Paso, Óscar Leeser, and the city’s head of Public Safety, Mario D’Agostino, have appealed directly to President Biden so that he does not repeal a measure without which they believe that the volume of immigrants that comes to your city could double to 5,000 people a day. “We need you to help us. This is so much bigger than El Paso,” the mayor pleaded.
Shelters without capacity
The city’s shelters are overflowing. The 85-person Welcome Center was hosting 200 on Wednesday, according to John Martin, deputy director of the Opportunity Center, which has five homeless shelters in the city. “This is chaotic,” he lamented. El Paso has dealt with other waves of immigrants in the past, but according to D’Agostino, the arrival was more gradual. “Now the numbers are unsustainable,” he said. According to the official, the city of 678,000 inhabitants has spent 9.5 million dollars – almost nine million euros – since last July to manage the migrant crisis, of which the federal government has only reimbursed two.
The Biden government says it has a plan to attack “the broken and dismantled immigration system” it has inherited. The seven-page document made public on Friday contemplates the hiring of 1,000 coordinators and 2,500 subcontractors to process new arrivals, hundreds of flights and bus routes to transfer them to other less crowded border posts, in addition to a 30% processing system. faster than last year. None of this has reassured either one or the other. The border is about to explode.
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