Biden’s Border Stoppage — and Mexico’s Policy — ‘Confusing’ Asylum Seekers

Many South American refugees in Mexico City have turned to week-long shelters and outdoor camps as temporary shelters en route to the U.S. It comes nearly a month after President Joe Biden’s border crackdown and long waits for asylum applications to be processed.

Thanks to the tracking feature in the CBP One U.S. Customs and Border Protection app, Mexico City is the southernmost point in Mexico where the app can be accessed, adding to the capital’s appeal as a central hub for migrants heading north.

On June 4, Biden signed an executive order that gives him the authority to temporarily close asylum proceedings in the world’s largest migration corridor. Key changes to the Immigration and Nationality Act allow for expedited removals on a larger scale and restricting asylum for undocumented immigrants.

Ramon Daniel Vargas Vargas has been living in Mexico City for five months, in a place known locally as “Casa Verde” in the Santa Maria la Ribera neighborhood for its easily recognizable shade of bright green. Casa Verde charges $100 a month for a small room.

Stands serving arepas, a pre-Columbian street food popular in Venezuela and Colombia, have sprung up near home, offering migrants a taste of home.

The home is mostly occupied by Venezuelans, Vargas said. He tried to book an asylum appointment through the CBP One app, which he has to do daily on his smartphone. He learned about Casa Verde by walking and driving around the area, though he said living conditions are difficult.

“They treat us like animals,” he said of the home’s owners. “I left Venezuela because of the uncertainty and the weakening economy. I have my own stand here selling cigarettes and sweets, everything helps while waiting for the border visit,” Vargas said in an interview outside his temporary home.

Jean Carlos, his wife and two children are a little further along in their journey to the U.S. They lived in a makeshift camp for two months in the Plaza de Soledad in the La Merced neighborhood in central Mexico City, and are currently staying at a shelter in San Luis Potosi. Although the accommodation is also temporary, it has its problems.

“This place is like a prison,” Carlos said. “They take your phone away from you at 6 p.m. every night and give it back at 10 a.m., but I need my phone to make an appointment through the app so we can get out of here.”

Biden’s changes are temporary and will remain in effect until the number of migrants arrested at the border remains below 1,500 for seven consecutive days and another 14 days after that first week. The new policy will go into effect again after a seven-day period of 2,500 or more illegal crossings.

Various immigrant rights groups sued the Biden administration this month over the rule, citing the 1980 Refugee Act, which was enacted to provide a process for “admitting refugees with special humanitarian needs” to the U.S. by providing “comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of admitted refugees.”

People who have already been nominated under CBP One can continue to apply for asylum, although the system has been met with criticism.

Some immigration advocates say that while asylum through CBP One is still available, scheduling appointments solely through the app is illegal and shrinks the already narrow window to apply for asylum, where wait times can be as long as eight months.

“People arriving at the border without an appointment at CBP One are not processed because there is a presumption of lack of reasonable concern,” said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

Mukherjee also noted the time limit Biden’s new order places on asylum seekers who don’t file an application. If someone crosses the U.S. border seeking asylum, they have four hours to find a lawyer who can make the case for why they should stay in the country. Before the order, asylum seekers had 24 hours to find a lawyer.

“They have four hours to find a lawyer for what is probably the most important interview of their entire lives,” Mukherjee said.

Dora Rodriguez, founder of the Casa de la Esperanza migrant shelter and center in the border town of Sasabe, Sonora, said she noticed a change in the border area the day the executive order went into effect. Casa de la Esperanza is unique in Mexico as it doesn’t primarily house people seeking asylum in the U.S. — it houses people who have just been deported to Mexico.

“The first thing you see is the cruelty. You see hundreds of people being deported in an hour. Border Patrol is making people sign forms they don’t understand and then they’re deporting them,” she said in a telephone interview.

Rodriguez drew attention to the cruelty of deporting people to a city that lies in the heart of one of the most difficult landscapes in the world, with a population of less than 1,000 people and few resources of its own.

“They take their shoelaces as a security measure, they take their identity cards to return to the country without anything to identify themselves, little girls and boys. Where are they going?”

Although the Mexican government has not issued any official response on border policy, agents from the National Guard and the National Institute of Migration forcibly relocated 400 migrants from a camp in Mexico City’s Giordano Bruno Square on June 5, the day Biden’s proclamation went into effect.

The migrants were transferred to buses and promised travel to legal shelters in Puebla, Morelos and throughout the state of Mexico, although it was not confirmed whether they reached those locations.

“What they’re doing with migrants here in Mexico, especially in the caravans and shelters, is displacing people. They’re disorienting them, it’s like a game of slides and ladders,” Guillermo Yrizar Barbosa, a professor and immigration researcher at the Ibero-American University of Puebla, said in a telephone interview.

Mexico’s National Institute of Migration apprehended 223,978 people for irregular migration status in Tabasco state between January and April 2024, 68,099 more than in Chiapas, which borders Guatemala and is a known entry point to the U.S.

Yrizar Barbosa finds this figure highly suspicious.

“We believe they are taking a lot of migrants from other places and now sending them to Tabasco,” he said. “The army, the National Guard, the Navy, they are setting up checkpoints wherever they send them, usually in a very rural area that is not accessible to journalists or lawyers.”

At a press conference on June 17, Nuria Fernández, head of the National System for Integral Family Development, stated that since the beginning of 2024, her organization has provided assistance to more than 48,111 children in 88 operating centers across the country, with a daily capacity of more than 9,000 migrant children, adolescents and their caregivers.

More than 40% of these services are located in the Southeast, specifically in the states of Campeche, Chiapas, Oaxaca, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Veracruz. Another 34% of services are located in the Northeast, in the states of Baja California, Chihuahua, Sinaloa and Sonora.

The government organization said the children are from Venezuela, Honduras, Ecuador, Guatemala, Colombia, Peru, El Salvador, Haiti, Brazil and Cuba.