Don’t come, you won’t enter immediately

WASHINGTON – As thousands of Honduran migrants make their way to the US border, Biden’s incoming administration, days away from taking office, has a message: don’t come now.

President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to end the Trump administration’s strict immigration policies, which focused on building a border wall and restricting asylum eligibility.

But those promises could be tested in the early days of the new government. If would-be emigrants from Central America perceive the time to come to the United States, the southern border could quickly be overwhelmed before systems are put in place to handle the influx.

A senior official with Biden’s transition team said the perception that the Biden administration would be able to allow all arriving asylum seekers to enter the United States to apply on day one was false.

“The situation at the border will not change overnight,” the transition manager told NBC News in an exclusive interview.

But the official declined to say when asylum seekers might be able to come to the United States and whether they would be detained pending a hearing.

An estimated 9,000 Honduran migrants are fleeing regions where food is scarce and devastated by two hurricanes, drought and economic hardship. As of Friday evening, around 2,000 members of the caravan pushed Guatemalan authorities and entered Guatemala without showing any documentation or negative COVID projections, the Associated Press reported. The caravan could arrive at the US border in the coming weeks.

While some may be spurred on by promises of an easier path to the United States, in the past immigration increases have occurred around U.S. elections and power transitions. There was a peak in migration in late 2016 and early 2017, just before Trump took office, and caravans from Central America arrived in Southern California in 2018, towards the election. mid-term.

Trump’s adviser, Stephen Miller, the administration’s hawkish immigration administration, told reporters shortly before the 2020 election that Biden’s immigration policies would lead to “open borders” and the end of the America as a “sovereign nation”.

Before the recent caravan, there were already tens of thousands of migrants who had been stopped at the U.S. border by the Trump administration and who had been told to wait in Mexico until their court date to present their demands for ‘asylum. Many have given up and returned south, but thousands remain in poor conditions in northern Mexico while waiting to enter the United States.

Biden’s senior transition official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said those waiting at the border, along with other vulnerable populations, would be a priority for processing and entry, rather than those who arrived recently.

The official said migrants attempting to cross to the United States to seek asylum in the first weeks of the new administration “must understand that they will not be able to enter the United States immediately.”

The official also stressed that any immigration legislation proposed by the Biden administration will affect undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, not those planning to arrive now.

The Biden administration wants to end the Trump administration’s practice of forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, known as the Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP), but it will not allow all migrants to enter the United States at the same time as soon as Biden would take. office, the official said.

“There is help on the way, but now is not the time to make the trip,” the official said.

The incoming administration has also pledged to reverse Trump’s asylum restrictions that have dramatically reduced the number of people eligible for protections.

Over time, the official said, the Biden administration plans to put in place a way to safely process migrants at the border and allow asylum seekers to make their claims.

The transition official declined to give details of what migrants traveling in the Honduran caravan will encounter when they reach the US border under a Biden administration, in part because they expect to receive more information about U.S. capabilities for processing migrants after Biden was sworn in on Wednesday.

But the official said the people in the caravan “won’t see when they get to the US border until Tuesday through Wednesday things have changed overnight and the ports are all open and they can enter the States- United”.

At the same time, Covid-19 rates are rising in the United States and around the world. The official said the pandemic, as well as the time it will take for the Biden administration to restart processing of migrants and asylum seekers at the southern border, now made travel particularly difficult.

“We need to send a message that health and hope are on the way, but coming now doesn’t make sense for their own safety … as we put in place processes that they may be able to access. the future, ”the official said. .