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MISSION, Texas (AP) – Overwhelmed and ill-prepared, US authorities release migrant families at the Mexican border without notice to appear in immigration court or sometimes without any paperwork – a time-saving and time-saving move left migrants confused.
The early releases ease the strain on the Border Patrol and its heavily overcrowded detention facilities, but shift work to Immigration and Customs and Law Enforcement, the agency that enforces immigration laws in the states. United. Families are released with reservation records – when they receive papers – although only parents are photographed and fingerprinted.
Border patrol began the unusual practice last week in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley, which has seen the largest increase in the number of migrant families and unaccompanied minors crossing the border. Last week, the agency added instructions for showing up to an ICE office within 60 days on adult booking documents.
But some have not obtained any documents, including dozens at the Catholic Church of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the Texas border town of Mission, where around 100 migrants freed by US authorities arrived each night to sleep on mats. in the classrooms of a closed primary school.
Carlos Enrique Linga, 27, waited at the shelter for a week undocumented with his 5-year-old daughter, hoping to join a friend in Tennessee. His wife is still in Guatemala with their twin 2-year-old daughters and a 3-month-old child.
Linga was not willing to leave the shelter until he obtained documents and asked for help from Catholic charities in the Rio Grande Valley.
“We hope they can help us with our papers so that we can leave, work and send (money) to my family,” said Linga, whose home in Guatemala was destroyed by storms in November. “The church has told us that there are sometimes mistakes. Because there are so many people, they forget.
Customs and Border Protection, which oversees border patrol, said it had stopped issuing court notices in some cases because preparing just one of the documents often took hours. Migrants undergo a background check and are tested for COVID-19.
The agency did not respond to questions about the number of migrants released without a court notice or any documents at all.
Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities in the Rio Grande Valley, knows 10 to 15 families released without paperwork since last week, a problem that has arisen before when there is a surge in new arrivals.
“It’s a problem, it’s a situation that we need to resolve, to make sure we follow up,” she said.
Migrants will receive court appearance notices upon their 60-day registration with ICE, according to a US official with first-hand knowledge of the projects who spoke on condition of anonymity as the plans were not returned public. It is not known how widespread this practice has been, but it is very common in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings.
Preparing a notice to appear in court can take anywhere from an hour to 90 minutes, said Chris Cabrera, spokesperson for the National Border Patrol Council, a union that represents officers. He welcomed the change.
“Honestly, on my side, I think it’s good because it’s less paperwork for our guys,” said Cabrera, who works in the Rio Grande Valley.
An increase in the number of people crossing the border, especially children traveling alone and families, has filled federal detention facilities. The United States has released families with children 6 and under and deported families with older children under pandemic-related powers that deny the ability to seek asylum.
Immigration lawyers have had mixed reactions to releasing people without court notices or paperwork, especially the requirement to register with ICE. They advise migrants to apply for another asylum route – one reserved for people already in the country. In that option, they meet with an asylum officer from Citizenship and Immigration Services in a less adversarial environment and, if denied, can appeal to an immigration judge, lawyers say.
“It’s a whole different tone,” said Charlene D’Cruz, director of the Project Corazon legal aid program at Lawyers for Good Government. And if they fail, they get “a second apple bite” in front of a judge.
Initially, U.S. officials didn’t even require registration of the ICE when it began releasing families without court notice in the past two weeks. But they have changed course. D’Cruz said the ICE could potentially issue a court notice, kick locals out, or do nothing.
“There are so many different options, and I don’t know what’s going to happen,” D’Cruz said.
Immigration courts, with a backlog of 1.3 million cases, are ill-prepared for a surge in new asylum claims.
At Mission Refuge, a town of about 85,000 people bordering Mexico with a large park known for birdlife, migrants who have reservation records have kept them closely. Along with their proof of a COVID-19 test, the documents are kept in large yellow envelopes that say, “Please help me. I do not speak English.”
Information on the reservation form is scarce: name, nationality, sex, date of birth. Some forms indicate that they are eligible for “prosecutorial discretion,” a designation that signals that they are not a priority for deportation.
Jose Sansario waited at the shelter for a week after arriving from Guatemala with his wife, Kimberly, and their 3-year-old daughter, Genesee. They were struggling to find flights to Richmond, Virginia, their final destination.
They left their home country at the beginning of March because a gang threatened to kill him if he did not give him the money from his auto repair business. He said he heard that the Biden administration was friendly to immigrants, despite repeated claims by the president and key aides that the border is not open.
“We didn’t know what was true, but we had faith – faith that God would help us and that faith would allow us to come in,” Sansario said.
Alba Urquia from El Salvador waited a week at the shelter because she was released without any documents after crossing the Rio Grande with a large group of migrants, including her 4-year-old daughter. She plans to help her father with his auto repair shop in Los Angeles.
“I can’t leave,” she said, sitting on a bench in the closed school playground. The shelter has since closed. “We are concerned that they will send us back to Mexico or to our country.”
“It would be a nightmare,” said Alexi Sarmiento from Honduras, who came to the United States with her 6 and 9-year-old daughters and was released without papers.
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