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The U.S. will set up migrant processing centers in Latin America to reduce the increasing number of arrivals at the Southwest border, U.S. State Department Secretary Antony Blinken and U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday morning.
The centers will be in Colombia and Guatemala, and will be used to screen the qualifications of migrants for asylum and other lawful programs, they said at a joint news conference. The centers, which may also be established in a few other countries, will be run by international agencies to process migrants before they move on to the U.S. southern border.
The move is the latest initiative of a multi-pronged strategy to slow migration as the U.S. government prepares to lift a pandemic-linked measure known as Title 42 at the southern border. The measure has been used over 2.7 million times since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.
Officials have said migration could rise to 10,000 a day, about double the number of encounters in March, after Title 42 is lifted, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection statistics.
Mexico’s role
Migration is a problem that can’t be solved alone, Blinken said at the news conference.
“The push and pull factors all demand that we work together,” he said.
Mayorkas agreed: “This is a hemispheric challenge that demands hemispheric solutions.”
Mayorkas said he expects migration at the southern U.S. border to increase after Title 42 is lifted. Last fiscal year, the U.S. Border Patrol logged a record 2.2 million migrant encounters. In the first six months of this fiscal year, encounters hit 1 million.
Smugglers are pitching lies to migrants ahead of the lifting of Title 42, he said.
“Let me be clear: Our border is not open and will not be open after May 11,” he said.
The DHS chief praised a January initiative that established humanitarian parole for up to 30,000 migrants monthly from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, all countries with high migration to the U.S. That program will continue, Mayorkas said. It could result in the legal entry of 360,000 migrants with financial sponsors annually.
Mayorkas emphasized that those who do not use or do not qualify for legal pathways will receive tough treatment. Under immigration law, they will face expedited removal within days or weeks, he said.
“An individual who is removed is subject to at least a five-year ban on admission to the United States and can face criminal prosecution for any subsequent attempt to cross the border illegally,” Mayorkas said.
The increase in expedited removal drew quick criticism from immigrant advocates.
“Expedited removal is a deeply flawed process that limits asylum seekers’ access to basic due process — particularly for those individuals who will be forced to undergo credible fear interviews in CBP detention,” said Mark Hetfield, president and CEO and the humanitarian nonprofit HIAS.
Mexico has played a prominent role in managing increasingly diverse migration from around the world and has taken back from the U.S. tens of thousands of migrants since the start of the pandemic.
But that has raised tensions in cities like Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, and Matamoros, across from Brownsville.
With negotiations ongoing, it was unclear whether the Mexican government would take back more migrants. In an earlier briefing, a senior Biden administration official praised Mexico but didn’t answer that question.
“We have excellent cooperation with Mexico on migration,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We’re incredibly grateful for the partnership.”
But the U.S. and Mexico can’t manage migration alone, the official said. Spain and Canada have also been brought into talks on migration with labor pathways, the official said.
The U.S. government will also expand appointments on the CBP One app for asylum screening when Title 42 lifts, the official said. Right now, fewer than 800 appointments a day are available and asylum-seekers quickly saturate the system and fail to secure an appointment.
The Biden administration will also expand family reunification processes for those from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia, and will increase refugee admissions from those in the Western Hemisphere, Mayorkas said.
The Biden administration will also increase its holding capacity for migrants, expand phone lines and privacy booths to conduct credible fear interviews — a first step in applying for U.S. asylum, the administration officials said in a written statement.
Mayorkas said DHS will not detain migrant families, as it has in the past.
Another planned step is to send more asylum officers and federal immigration judges to complete immigration proceedings at the border. That measure is crucial, because the backlog in immigration courts has soared to new heights: nearly 2.1 million cases, according to the Syracuse University nonprofit TRAC.