U.S. begins admitting migrants as Biden phased out ‘stay in Mexico’ policy

The Biden administration has started attacking a cornerstone of former President Trump’s immigration policy, as on Friday it allowed the first asylum seekers to enter the country.

President Biden’s new rules allow 25 asylum seekers to stay in the United States on Friday pending their hearing, instead of staying in Mexico, as they were supposed to under the previous administration.

The migrants tested negative for COVID-19 and were taken to quarantined San Diego hotels before traveling by plane or bus to their final destinations, according to Michael Hopkins, general manager of the Jewish Family Service in San Diego, who contributes to the effort.

The United States is expected to release 25 asylum seekers a day in California. Migrants are also expected to be admitted to Brownsville and El Paso, Texas, starting next week.

There are approximately 25,000 people with active cases in the program; several hundred of them appeal against decisions.

Officials have warned migrants not to flood the border as the Trump-era program is being phased out and to register online through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees early next week.

“This latest move is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not match our nation’s values,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement last week.

Friday’s developments at the border mark the start of fulfilling President Biden’s campaign pledge to end the policy known as the “Migrant Protection Protocols,” which Trump implemented to reverse a wave asylum seekers.

On January 9, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s asylum rules.

Supporters of the MPP program have said it has reduced the flow of migrants heading for the border and eliminated bogus asylum claims. Critics said the program was cruel to refugees in need of protection and aimed at closing the border.

Around 70,000 asylum seekers have been part of the program since its launch in January 2019.

Anyone entering the United States has the legal right to seek asylum, which is granted to those fleeing persecution, in accordance with US asylum law and international treaty obligations.

The White House said last week that migrants with active cases would be released in the United States with notices to appear in immigration courts.

As the asylum system returns to its old mode of operation, many questions remain. It is unclear how Central Americans who have been turned back to Mexico will return to the border after returning home, and there is no timetable in place to resolve all outstanding cases.

The Mexican National Guard said on Saturday it had detained 108 Central American migrants traveling to the United States without papers to find themselves in Mexico.

In recent weeks, thousands of migrants from Central America have headed north after back-to-back hurricanes late last year that displaced more than half a million people in the region.

In California, the Jewish Family Service – a coalition of nongovernmental groups called the San Diego Rapid Response Network – provides hotel rooms, medicals, and arranges and pays for transportation and food for migrants if needed, according to Hopkins.

“We’ll make sure they’re healthy and in good shape to travel,” Hopkins said in an interview.

Edwin Gomez, who said his wife and son were killed by gangs in El Salvador after he couldn’t pay their extortion demands, was eager to join his 15-year-old daughter in Texas.

“Who thought that day would come?” Gomez, 36, said Wednesday at a Tijuana border post. “I never thought that would happen.”

Enda Marisol Rivera of El Salvador and her 10-year-old son braved freezing temperatures in northern Mexico, trying to stay warm in a makeshift tent city made of tarps. Despite the explosion in the Arctic, Rivera was encouraged by the news.

Rivera was hoping she would be allowed to come live with her sister in Los Angeles and wait for her court date there.

“We have faith in God that we will be allowed in,” she said Wednesday. “We have already spent enough time here.”

In the tent town of Matamoros, where Rivera and around 1,000 other migrants were waiting, medical staff were cautiously optimistic.

“People are incredibly hopeful that this is their chance to pass, but there is also a lot of anxiety and fear that somehow, if they do the wrong thing and they aren’t in the right place at the right time, they’re likely to miss out, ”said Andrea Leiner, spokesperson for Global Response Management.

With pole wires