Every year, waves of people from around the world make their way to southern California to start a new life and find safe harbour.
Along remote, isolated sections of the border between California and Mexico, many asylum seekers cross illegally, often fleeing violence or persecution in their home countries, and then surrender to border agents; apprehensions among those crossing in the San Diego region recently reached their highest level in decades.
The San Ysidro border checkpoint, connecting Tijuana and San Diego, represents the busiest land crossing in the western hemisphere. Asylum seekers and tens of thousands of citizens or visa holders pass northbound through the official port of entry every day.
Now, in the wake of Joe Biden’s executive order on immigration, which temporarily blocks the entry of most people who cross the US-Mexico border illegally – such as through the California desert or mountains – this bustling border region is filled with an ominous uncertainty.
Aid groups in the San Diego area are grappling with the abrupt changes, and are doubling down on efforts to educate people about their rights. Although the impact on legal ports of entry like San Ysidro may not be visible, some experts fear the rules won’t deter people from making the dangerous journey to the US and crossing unlawfully through treacherous landscapes, and will instead sow confusion among an already vulnerable population.
“These restrictions on access to the asylum system and on asylum eligibility do not stop people, in the short and long term, from seeking protection in the United States,” said Monika Langarica, a senior staff attorney with the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “But they do cause a lot of confusion for people seeking asylum, and for the legal and humanitarian providers that serve them.”
People waiting in shelters in Tijuana, for example, do not always have access to reliable information about their rights and about the current asylum process, Langarica said. Big changes to that process can “very easily thrust them into the crosshairs of purveyors of disinformation”, including smugglers and traffickers.
In general, the new order allows for authorities to quickly remove most people who cross the border unlawfully – at least during times when apprehensions or “encounters” at the border are high. Certain types of asylum seekers, such as victims of severe trafficking and unaccompanied children, are exempt from the rule. Those who are ordered to be removed from the US could face a five-year ban on re-entering the country and potential criminal prosecution.
Those measures went into effect on Wednesday, and will be in place until apprehensions at the southern border drop to a seven-day average of less than 1,500.
People can still seek to enter the country in a lawful way, officials have reiterated, specifically by scheduling an appointment at an official port of entry, such as San Ysidro, through a government app called CBP One.
But the app has long been plagued by glitches, and people sometimes wait for months for an available appointment – if they can get one at all. Experts worry that the new order could increase the backlog of people attempting to secure one of the coveted daily appointments through CBP One.
“It’s devoid of due process,” Langarica said, “and it’s going to subject people to these rapid deportations.”
‘Forced to take desperate measures’
To combat misinformation, groups such as the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a social justice law firm, are planning to meet directly with asylum seekers at shelters in Tijuana to inform them about the order. Immigrant Defenders has been giving “know-your-rights” presentations in shelters for years, said Margaret Cargioli, the organization’s directing attorney of policy and advocacy.
The law firm also represents asylum seekers in court based on a “universal representation” model, meaning that cases are taken as they come, rather than based on merit. But now, people who cross the border illegally might have a very small window of time before deportation, putting a strain on the few attorneys who handle those types of cases, Cargioli said. The firm was already getting calls on Friday from people seeking asylum who were affected by the order.
“Desperate people are forced to take desperate measures to save their lives and the lives of their children,” Cargioli said of people who will continue to make dangerous border crossings. “And we’re going to see people who have valid asylum cases be removed, either to Mexico or their country of origin, because it’s not easy to prepare an asylum case within a few hours.”
There are still many unknowns about how the measures will affect every element of the complex asylum system. But after Biden’s announcement, aid groups still had a job to do – if not a bigger, and much more confusing, one.
For Ruth Mendez, a volunteer with Immigrant Defenders, that job involves helping people who are dropped off at a San Diego trolley station a few miles north of the border, often without much information about where they are or where to go next. Scores of asylum seekers have been unloaded here since the city’s migrant welcome center closed a few months ago.
Mendez greeted a crowd of people at the station on Tuesday, giving them a rundown of important information: how far away the airport is, where they can exchange pesos for dollars, and simply what their current location is within the US. Many bewildered people, Mendez said, tell her that they need to get to California.
“I think about it like this: how would I want to be treated if I’m arriving to a new country?” Mendez said. “Everything’s a culture shock.”
It’s unclear exactly how the order will affect “street releases”, like those of the people at the trolley station. For now, many asylum seekers on both sides of the border are trying to move forward with whatever piecemeal information they have.
One man named Mujtaba, who is from Afghanistan and left to escape the Taliban, waited at the station on Tuesday, hoping to get a ride to the airport. He had just come from an immigration detention center and processing, he said.
In the midst of the lengthy, perilous journey to the United States, Mujtaba, whose last name was withheld for safety reasons, hadn’t heard anything about Biden’s order, which had been announced only hours before. He was just trying to put one foot in front of the other.
“I’m very tired,” he said. “People might think that [the journey] is easy, but it’s not easy at all. It’s very dangerous. You play with your life.”
