Since the Biden administration ceased reviewing the majority of asylum requests, certain shelters south of the border are caring for significantly more refugees, while others have not seen much of a shift.
Over a week after the interim suspension went into force, the impact still seems unequal. There is ample capacity in shelters located south of Texas and California, but according to their directors, shelters in the Mexican state of Sonora are being overloaded with up to 500 deportations from Arizona every day.
“We’re having to turn people away because we can’t, we don’t have the room for all the people who need shelter,” stated Joanna Williams, the executive director of Kino Border Initiative, an organization that can house up to 100 people at once.
According to Juan Francisco Loureiro, the director of the San Juan Bosco shelter in Nogales, Arizona, there are roughly 120 people living there, compared to about 40 before the policy change.
“We have had a quite remarkable increase,” Loureiro declared on Thursday. The majority, comprising both adults and families, are Mexican. Additionally, Mexico consented to take in deportees from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba.
More Mexican men, women, and children started to arrive at a shelter in Agua Prieta, a small town that borders Douglas, Arizona, last weekend.
On Sunday, more than 50 arrived, and on Monday, roughly 30 a day. Perla del Angel, an employee of the Exodus Migrant Attention Center, stated that the majority had entered the country further west, along the Arizona-California state line, just like others that were transferred to Nogales.
The reason Nogales is affected may be explained by the fact that Mexicans account for a disproportionately high proportion of border arrests throughout most of Arizona as compared to other places.
Since officials simply need to take Mexican nationals to a border crossing rather than scheduling a flight, they are typically the easiest nationality to deport.
Directors of four sizable shelters in Tijuana announced this week that since the asylum prohibition went into force, they had not received a single deported immigrant.
On the first full day of running an information station at the main crossing where migrants are deported from San Diego, only seven migrants were advised by the migrant advocacy group Al Otro Lado.
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Since the new regulation went into force on July 5, thousands of people have been deported, according to Biden administration officials last week.
The rule suspends asylum anytime the number of arrests for illegal crossings reaches a threshold of 2,500 in a single day. Not much more was said by the authorities, who briefed reporters under the condition of anonymity. The suspension will last until the number of arrests drops below 1,500 per day on a seven-day average.
Following the announcement of the program, Blas Nuñez-Neto, the assistant homeland security secretary for border and immigration policy, told Spanish-language reporters, “We are ready to repatriate a record number of people in the coming days.”
A request for data on Friday was not immediately answered by the National Immigration Institute in Mexico or the Homeland Security Department.
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Meanwhile, undocumented immigrants have been apprehended by Mexican officials and relocated well south of the border.
Previous changes in U.S. policy, including as the “Remain in Mexico” plan implemented under Trump, which saw roughly 70,000 migrants wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court, have caused severe strain in Mexican border cities.
On Wednesday, proponents of immigration filed a legal appeal against the Biden administration’s policy modification.
Advocates fear that as more people attempt to obtain legal admission through the CBP One app—which offers 1,450 appointments per day—more people will become stranded in shelters. According to Olvera, some migrants at Espacio Migrante have been attempting to schedule an appointment on CBP One for the past eight months.
