Refugees may be denied the opportunity to apply for asylum

Migrant rights advocates at the California border asked at a press conference that people should refrain from crossing the border as illegals when Title 42 ends, because if detained, they could be deprived of the opportunity to seek asylum in the United States for years.

“Most of the people who arrive at the border to enter the United States are no longer arriving undocumented in search of work as they used to be, but are people fleeing violence to save their lives,” said a member of La Opinión from the Mexican Academy of Rights person. , Jose Luis Perez Canchola.

“Now they need to collect all the evidence about the reasons that forced them to leave their places of origin, so that they can prove that they are in danger and can apply for asylum,” he said.

He warned that many people currently camped between two 30-foot parallel border walls on the San Diego border strip, if they remain there when Section 42 expires, could be detained as undocumented and denied the opportunity to apply for asylum once every year.

San Diego Sector Border Patrol spokesman Angel Moreno said those caught crossing the border without permission between checkpoints could lose the opportunity to seek asylum for up to two years.

But he warned that if they were repeat offenders and detained again to cross in the same way, they could be deported and prevented from seeking asylum in the US for five to 20 years.

For his part, the director of the Juventud 2000 migrant shelter, José María Garcia Lara, said that at least 35 of the 220 migrants in his shelter have already been assigned to one of the San Diego checkpoints in the days following the end. Section 42 and subject to Section 8.

He said they were migrants who used the CBP One mobile app both to book appointments and to present evidence and documents to the authorities.

Garcia Lara hopes that when a migrant does not have all the evidence needed to apply for asylum but mentions that he can get it, he will allow him to return to Tijuana to wait for that evidence to be received or sent.

However, the shelter’s director said he feared that organized crime could use the Section 42 to Section 8 change to convince migrants to pay to get them across the border.

“We are afraid of disinformation that doubtful migrants will be convinced, perhaps because they do not have the necessary evidence,” said Garcia Lara.

He said they had already offered some migrants to cross the border “for $2,000, $5,000, $7, $8,000; These are the things that speak to us.”

Regarding the restrictions on the many migrants who cannot file complaints in the places they fled from because the authorities are linked to organized crime, José Luis Pérez Canchola said that “by protocol, Baja California Attorney’s Office should take the complaint and make it clear that people say they didn’t report it out of fear.”

“I know from experience that this complaint document in Baja California is accepted by the CBP as valid for an asylum claim,” the spokesperson said.

For his part, Sergio Tamai, coordinator of Mexicali’s Angels Without Borders, criticized the United States government for pressuring the Mexican government to control the flow of migrants seeking to enter the United States.

“The government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador is even using the National Guard to manage migration, and in the meantime, the administration of President Joe Biden has been hitting low blows against the government of López Obrador by funding organizations that oppose the Mexican government,” Tamai said.

Tamai explained that on May 17, he would lead a demonstration in which they would symbolically burn down an official USAID facility “for providing $60 million to organizations that want to destabilize the López Obrador government.”

He commented that it is “a double standard with which the Biden administration expects help from Mexico to solve problems like migration, but on the other hand, it hurts the Mexican government by funding opponents.”

The activist said that when Section 42 ends this Thursday, the United States must now support Mexico by opening up the border a little to migrant asylum seekers, as all levels of government should deal with migrants seeking to enter the United States, not Mexico.