Asylum restrictions on the border with Mexico are tightened

The US government of Joe Biden on Monday tightened the restrictions on the right to request asylum on the border with Mexico announced in June, with just over a month left for the presidential elections.

Three months ago, the Democratic government authorized closing the border with Mexico to migrants seeking asylum when there are more than 2,500 irregular crossings over a seven-day average. It could be reopened when the number fell below 1,500 in that same period.

As of this Tuesday, the average for opening the border increases to “28 consecutive calendar days”, that is, including weekends and holidays, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported in a statement.

The authorities will include “unaccompanied children from non-contiguous countries” in the number of crossings, which will increase the likelihood that the numbers will exceed the cap.

It will only count them since immigration restrictions do not apply to minors traveling alone. Nor to victims of “a serious form of human trafficking”, migrants with a visa and those who arrive at a port of entry through a legal route, such as the CBP One mobile application.

Migrant defense associations filed a lawsuit against the decree in June and this Monday they once again raised their voices.

“Illegal”

“This rule is illegal,” says Omar Jadwat, an executive with the powerful American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), in a statement.

“The asylum statute enacted by Congress recognizes that people fleeing danger should not be forced to wait and try to get an appointment to request asylum,” he adds.

Irregular migration is one of the central issues of the November 5 presidential elections, between former Republican President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump, 78, threatens mass expulsions of migrants if he regains the keys to the White House.

Despite his anti-immigrant rhetoric, voters appear to trust him more than Harris to address illegal immigration, according to polls.

To counteract this, the 59-year-old vice president promised to strengthen security and reform “a broken immigration system” during a trip on Friday to the border with Mexico.

Prone to exaggerations, Trump claims that Biden and Harris have allowed “21 million illegal migrants to enter the country from all over the world.”

In fact, since Biden was inaugurated in January 2021, authorities have intercepted ten million migrants and asylum seekers in total, of which almost eight and a half million were trying to cross the border with Mexico, according to the US border patrol.

This figure does not represent the number of actual crossings because some migrants attempt it several times.

Since June, the Biden administration has been quite satisfied with the drop in border crossings: 107,503 in August across the southern border compared to more than 300,000 last December.

Fewer crossings on the border with Mexico

Between June 5 and August 31, the number of crossings fell “more than 55%” and the 7-day average “has decreased to less than 1,800” per day, the DHS reported this Monday in a statement.

More than 121,000 people have been expelled or repatriated between those dates, he specifies.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, however, estimates that the restrictions “do not replace the action of Congress.”

“We cannot provide the larger, more lasting systemic changes that America’s broken immigration system desperately needs, because only Congress can do it,” he stressed in a statement.

Biden and Harris accuse Trump of having boycotted a bipartisan bill that would restrict the flow of migrants and increase border agents. The hardline Republicans sentenced him to death because they considered him too lazy..