President Joe Biden is expected to announce additional executive action on immigration in the coming days, and teams of immigrants and human rights are pushing to end or cancel the emergency order opposed to former President Donald Trump’s coronavirus pandemic that closed the southern border.
Critics say Trump used the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to keep asylum seekers away. The federal government’s emergency order to temporarily deport undocumented immigrants. Since its release in March, the United States has deported more than 393,000 immigrants detained on the U. S. -Mexico border.
But finishing the emergency order at the border, combined with several executive orders signed through Biden on his first day in office, which supported or canceled many of Trump’s restrictive immigration policies, can drive another giant wave of migrants.
Biden’s movements included stopping the structure of Trump’s border wall and temporarily postponing some deportations. A giant wave of migrants can lead to a humanitarian crisis on the southern border similar to those of 2018 and 2019, analysts say.
A humanitarian crisis at the border, especially so early in its presidency, would likely derail much of Biden’s pro-immigration agenda, and add its main objective: to pass a immigration reform law that grants legalization and citizenship to millions of undocumented immigrants.
“If there were any other humanitarian crises at the border, it would have negative effects not only on the migrants themselves, but would also reduce the likelihood of ensuring broader immigration legislation for long-term Republicans,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a politician. analyst at the Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
Alex Nowrasteh had an evaluation.
“This will surely send giant waves of asylum seekers and unauthorized immigrants to the border,” said Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the Libertarian Cato Institute. “I think that would undermine Biden’s plans to the fullest.
Trump, and several of his most sensitive border officials, have spent months warning biden’s new administration about the dangers of revoking some of its policies, warning that it can only lead to a new humanitarian crisis.
Whether giant waves of migrants will succeed on the U. S. border will depend on whether the governments of Mexico and Guatemala reach agreements with the United States under Trump’s previous administration to prevent migrants from entering their borders, he said.
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“If Mexico continues to try to prevent these caravans, dismantle them, and enforce immigration legislation for itself and the United States, then it may not be that big,” Nowrasteh said. “Then, if they prevent it, it would be massive. ” I think there would be a massive boost. “
Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, which supports Biden’s immigration program, said the challenge will be for Biden’s administration to start reopening the border to asylum seekers without sending a message that can be exploited through criminal smugglers’ organizations. triggering a giant wave of migrants.
“Smugglers and smugglers will benefit from any belief that a Biden management will supply to exploit migrants,” Noorani said. “This is one of the main reasons why (previous) flows have gone as they did, because posters must monetize this journey. “
There are already signs that a humanitarian crisis can be served, from caravans of migrants forming in Central America to frustrated asylum seekers stranded in Mexico to demonstrate on the U. S. border.
On December 29, more than a hundred asylum seekers, usually from Cuba, blocked a binational bridge in Juarez off El Paso in the hope that Biden’s new administration would overturn a Trump administration policy that asks them to wait in Mexico for immigration. Court Hearings in the United States Biden administration has stopped enrolling new migrants in the Migrant Protection Protocols program, also known as MPP and Staying in Mexico, however, another 70,000 people are still forced to wait in Mexico for hearings and have not yet been allowed to enter the United States.
In early January, thousands of migrants travelling in a caravan left Honduras for the United States in hopes of being welcomed by Biden’s new administration. Approximately 9,000 migrants, mostly from Honduras, entered Guatemala, where they clashed with security forces days before Biden took office. They have been rejected and since then thousands have been deported to Honduras and several other countries, the Los Angeles Times reported.
In the first 3 months of fiscal year 2021, from October to December, the number of unauthorized single adult migrants encountered through border patrol officers increased 178% to 180,633 compared to the same period. last year, according to customs and border coverage data. Border patrol officials encounter more single adult migrants in the domain. There are symptoms that the numbers are higher because border patrol officials continually encounter many of the same migrants. Migrants from Mexico and other Central American countries are temporarily deported to Mexico under Title 42 of the Cinputs Coronavirus Pandemic Emergency Rule for Disease Control implemented through the Trump administration, according to teams that assist migrants in border. Many of those who were sent across the border to Mexico turn around and leave to return immediately. Border patrol officials in the El Paso domain say unauthorized migrants benefit from swift Title 42 deportations to cross over and over again in an attempt to enter the United States illegally. Officers routinely pick up single adults with 10 crossing attempts on their record.
And on Saturday, the bodies of 19 migrants believed to be heading to the United States were shot and burned inside several cars in a city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, near the Texas border, according to the Associated Press. the bodies were discovered in a well-known smuggling direction where territorial battles between rival cartels are common.
The Mexican government is conducting DNA tests to find out the identity of migrants, however, several families in Guatemala that killed migrants come largely from indigenous states/departments of San Marcos near Guatemala’s border with Mexico, according to El Economista.
Polleros in Guatemala, as people smugglers are known in Spanish, charged deficient migrants in rural areas a down payment of $1,000 to advise them to the United States, said Antonio Velasquez, president of the Maya Chapin Organization of Guatemala, Arizona, a Phoenix-based base group.
Family and friends in Guatemala told Velasquez that smugglers are falsely telling rural deficient people that Biden’s new administration is handing over legal documents to migrants, even though Biden’s immigration proposal is far from up to the law and would only gain advantages for undocumented immigrants already in the United States. , not those who arrived after January 1.
“They promise other people that they will get roles” if they succeed in America,” which is not true,” Velasquez said.
Velasquez said he seeks to spread the word among migrants in Guatemala so as not to put their lives at risk amid the migrants discovered massacred in Mexico.
“We tell people, especially young people, to take a chance,” Velasquez said. “It’s easy. We’ve noticed how harmful adventure is. “
Ruiz Soto of the Migration Policy Institute said it’s too early to tell if any other humanitarian crises could be ready for the border.
Much will count on Mexico and Guatemala to proceed to prevent migrants from crossing their country.
U. S. officials tried to send a message to the migrants who were coming, he said.
On Friday, U. S. Ambassador to Guatemala, William Popp, warned that migrants arriving at the U. S. border without papers would be deported due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Our message is clear,” Popp said at a news convention in Guatemala. “Our border remains closed to those who enter illegally. “
Mexican and Guatemalan officials are also pressuring the Honduran government to do more to prevent migrant caravans from quoting the pandemic, Soto said.
<< With regard to Honduras' caravan of abnormal migrants, which began its movement on January 15, the Mexican government called on countries in the region to put locally established migration and fitness protocols into force in a responsible manner for the risks of physical fitness arising. for migrants and the population of transit communities," Mexico's foreign secretary said in a statement.
Photos and videos posted on social media show Guatemalan policemen and infants forced to disperse the caravan. Soldiers deployed along Mexico’s southern border prevented migrants from crossing a river separating Mexico from Guatemala.
Javier Osorio, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies migration patterns from Central America, said migrants can simply prevent migrants from entering the United States in caravans, which were originally trained to protect migrants from criminal attacks, in reaction to recent repressions. return to small computers that are harder to detect.
“If this security in numbers ends up being an impediment because they are detected smoothly and can send a giant army or police force to arrest and deter them, then an advantageous strategy is to divide those giant teams into fragments and Americans crossing. in other ways, ” he said. This will make it very difficult for the government to stumble or deter such crossings. “
Messages from senior officials will not prevent migrants from seeking success in the United States, Soto said.
Indeed, enormous pressures continue to push migrants from the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras to flee their countries, adding excessive poverty, gang violence, economic mistrust and corruption.
The coronavirus pandemic has further damaged the economies of these countries, increasing poverty. Consecutive primary hurricanes also devastated parts of Central America in November, Honduras and Guatemala, Soto said.
“The question is: will the message be enough to succeed in migrants correctly?And will it be enough to deter long-term flows?Because of the situations on the ground, I don’t. I think that’s the way it is. But what will continue to exist will be the strong presence in Mexico and Guatemala. “
He said it was remarkable that Biden’s administration continued to force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their immigration court hearings instead of allowing them to enter the U. S. emergency order and Trump’s administration against the border coronavirus.
Ruiz Soto expects any adjustment to these policies to be implemented gradually than at once.
In the long run, Biden’s proposed immigration reform law requires an investment of approximately $4 billion in Central America to address some of the fundamental reasons that force others to migrate, Soto said.
Ramón Márquez Vega agrees. He leads Help in Action, a non-profit organization that works with migrant shelters in Mexico.
“In 2019, President Trump’s tension toppled the flows, and then came the pandemic,” Vega said. “The fundamental reasons for this displacement will not have to diminish. Consider that COVID has re-exposed social and economic factors. “problems, and now you’re up to Hurricanes Eta and Iota in November.
A recent USAID report estimates that the two hurricanes affected nearly nine million people in Central America and that losses are expected to exceed $6 billion caused by Hurricane Mitch by 1ninenine8.
Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, calls on Biden’s management to give greater prestige to transitority coverage for Central Americans affected by the hurricane, allowing them to legally go and paint in the United States.
“Let me quote what Admiral Craig Faller, who leads South Command
Oscar Chacón of Chicago-based Alianza America said offering others affected by the storm prestige of transitional coverage would help maintain migration and order.
It would also financially help these countries through the billions of dollars in remittances that migrants send each year, he said.
Javier Arce of La Voz and Lauren Villagran of El Paso Times contributed to this story.
Contact the reporter at daniel. gonzalez@arizonarepublic. com or 602-444-8312. Follow him on Twitter @azdangonzalez.
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