Asylum-seeking immigrants forced to remain in Mexico under a controversial Trump-era program will be processed for entry into Texas as soon as next Friday, setting off optimism and a scramble to safely welcome them among resettlement agencies.
Under the Biden administration initiative, as many as 300 people a day will be processed into the U.S., senior White House officials said. They had previously arrived in the U.S. to legally seek refuge before being forced to wait back in Mexico under the program called Migration Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico,
There are about 25,000 such cases pending in a program that enrolled a total of about 70,000. Mexican camps and shelters where most of them live while waiting to be summoned to the U.S. for their asylum hearings often lack adequate health care and medical supplies.
Many were forced to wait in Matamoros, where about 1,000 people are living outdoors in squalor in a sprawling camp near the banks of the Rio Grande. Extortion, violence and even kidnappings have been reported among camp dwellers.
“Sometimes we may be concerned about families and individuals coming into our country and wondering where we draw the line, when is enough enough,” said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley. “We must always remember that they are human beings.”
“They are people and we must treat them with respect and dignity as we all need to be treated,” she said. “A safe orderly process, a legal process is hopeful and something that we must offer to someone who is suffering and in fear for their lives.”
White House officials said processing will begin next Friday at three unnamed cities. Advocates and others have identified those locations as Brownsville and El Paso in Texas and San Ysidro in California.
Pimentel emphasized that the immigrants will be allowed the freedom to travel to their final destination cities where they can await the outcome of their cases in the nation’s immigration courts. Many have family in the U.S. and originally planned to stay with them.
Pimentel has been heavily involved in immigrants’ rights issues for years. She pushed hard for a reversal of former President Donald Trump’s widely criticized policy of separating children from their parents when they arrived at the border.
Joined by a handful of other humanitarian groups, her agency plans to take the lead in helping the asylum seekers resettle in the Rio Grande Valley.
“I am very happy for the families,” Pimentel said in a video call Friday morning. “It is about time they got good news.”
United Nations agencies will also be leading the effort on the Mexican side of the border, she said. They will test the immigrants for COVID-19 in Mexico, she said.
Pimentel said she was particularly encouraged last week when first lady Jill Biden called her to check on the welfare of the families she had visited in Matamoros during the Biden presidential campaign. But Jill Biden did not tell her that processing of the remaining migrant families would begin soon, she said.
Life in Matamoros has been a cruel ordeal for many families. Senior White House officials said Thursday night that vulnerable immigrants will be given preference, but they didn’t detail how those people would be identified.
Processing will begin for families that have been in the program the longest and for those identified as particularly vulnerable, Pimentel said.
Pimentel said it is likely that the LGBTQ migrants will be among those chosen for their vulnerability.
In Matamoros, asylum-seeker Estuardo Cifuentes said Friday was an emotional day as the news trickled in. The Guatemalan helps run the Rainbow Bridge program for LGBTQ asylum-seekers, who have been persecuted in their home countries. Many in Matamoros have also faced extortion attempts for being gay, he said.
“There is so much hope,” the 33-year-old Cifuentes said. “We think we are more vulnerable. We see some light after all this time.”
Cifuentes has been living in Matamoros for 18 months.
Only those enrolled in the program, known by its MPP initials, will be allowed to be processed for passage, White House officials emphasized.
In Mexico, the Foreign Relations Ministry said it “welcomes the commitment of the United States” to work together to address regional immigration. Like the U.S., the Mexican government emphasized the new measures only cover those in MPP. Other “migrants should not go to the border between Mexico and the United States,” the ministry said.
The Mexican government also noted they were informed that an emergency order, known as Title 42 for its place in the federal code, remains in place.
The vast majority of immigrants arriving at the border are being turned away or immediately expelled under Title 42. It was put in place by the Trump administration last March and allows for their rapid removal because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Under changes in Mexico immigration law that covers families with young children, some of those families have been allowed into the U.S. in recent weeks.
Pimentel said she believes that has only been the case in the northern Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with people crossing primarily into the Rio Grande Valley.
A small number of immigrant families are being allowed into Laredo, which borders Tamaulipas state, said Rebecca Solloa, the executive director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Laredo. About one or two immigrant families are released into Laredo daily, she said. Catholic Charities plans to reopen their La Frontera shelter next week.
Pimentel estimated that about 2,200 people in migrant families have crossed into the Valley from Tamaulipas.
Border Patrol figures released earlier this week show an increase in the number of individuals in migrant families to about 7,260 in January, from an average of about 4,500 in the first three months of the fiscal year. Those numbers are far below May, the peak month in 2019, when more than 80,000 people in migrant familes arrived seeking refuge.
But public officials and nonprofits assisting immigrants worry that more are coming, particularly from Honduras and Guatemala where a pair of hurricanes hit late last year.
