The US is using a dysfunctional app to “manage” the humanitarian crisis, and the situation is reaching breaking point.
Migrants have been using the CBP One app to schedule appointments with border agents since January. When Title 42 expired in May, the U.S. reverted to Title 8, imposing a five-year ban on anyone who tries to pass between checkpoints and doesn’t use the app.
The Department of Homeland Security calls the app a “safe, orderly and humane tool for border control” and says it will make the process “more efficient and streamlined” for migrants. But by forcing migrants to wait months in Mexico for appointments, the United States is effectively shifting the blame onto Mexico, increasing migrants’ vulnerability and leading to a surge in extortion and kidnappings.
The app assigns border appointments based on a combination of how long someone has been waiting and a lottery system. But migrants cannot take advantage of this system until they arrive in central or northern Mexico. Having to wait for the app to allocate a reservation would violate people’s rights to apply for asylum immediately. Additionally, more people are camping on the streets, a situation exacerbated by the growing number of migrants. Mexican authorities detected 1,566,000 undocumented immigrants in the first 10 months of 2023 alone, compared to 445,000 in all of 2022. Last year’s number of registrations was the highest ever, and this year’s number is expected to quadruple that number.
“We think the flow of migrants will continue to be large,” said Sergio Luna, director of the Holy Family shelter in Tlaxcala state and one of REDODEM’s coordinators. truth. REDODEM is a network of 24 migrant shelters across 13 states in Mexico.
Lupe Alberto Flores has been using the app to help migrants near the border in Matamoros and at Casa Torchan, a migrant shelter in Mexico City. He is also researching the use of technology in asylum governance for his PhD. He said because the app is partly a lottery, people often wonder if their application was incorrect when they see others waiting for him for only two weeks.
“Apps externalize borders…Mexico City has become the border of the United States,” Flores said.
Lottery app to process traumatized people on the run
The apps “confuse your mind and cause despair. It’s hard to understand and it’s not clear what information they’re looking for,” said Michelle, a lawyer and Casa Torchan volunteer. Martinez Crespo said.
He said, for example, questions about residency are unclear (and immigrants from the South don’t know whether to stay in Mexico or in their country of origin, where they stay while waiting for an appointment), and that it It’s frustrating, time-consuming, and sometimes subject to technical errors.” Information cannot be edited, so people often register multiple times, but what impact does that have on wait times? I don’t know if I’ll give it to you.
The app also asks them to enter the addresses of family members or contacts in the U.S., which many immigrants and refugees don’t have.
Traffickers, criminals, and fraudsters are taking advantage of this technological disruption to take advantage of migrants seeking help and information. Prices vary widely, but one study by refugee advocacy group HIAS found migrants were being scammed out of up to $20,000 by scammers who promised to book them.
Migrants told Luna that they paid between 50 and 200 pesos at cyber cafes just for invalid pre-registrations. “Then they arrive believing they have already registered their reservation,” he said, explaining that immigration authorities often deport them when this happens.
U.S. outsources migrant processing and volunteer care in Mexico
Immigrants are attracted to the legality of the app, but they also want humans to listen to their stories, Flores argued. With this app, “there’s no one to guide you. It’s automated… So what we (volunteers) have been doing at Casa Tochan and Casa Tochan. [the shelter in] “Matamoros is a bureaucratic state worker to compensate for the fact that the United States is not doing its job,” he said.
“for [U.S.] “That’s valuable because the Mexican government is not dealing with people on the ground in Mexico…but humanitarian workers at the border are reaching a boiling point because they don’t have the resources or the space,” he said. added.
U.S. offloading is digital, administrative, and logistical. Those rejected in the United States are often sent to Mexico. And as of October, Mexico has increased its deportations of Cubans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans, likely as a result of pressure from the United States and an increase following high-level bilateral meetings. ing. Mexico detained 240,000 migrants in the first half of this year.
Most immigrants wait three to five months to receive their first appointment letter, then another two weeks for their assigned date. “This means people haven’t left the shelter for three months…and that’s part of the reason why there are so many people on the streets,” said Casa Tochan, director of the shelter. Gabriela Hernandez said. truth.
Casa Tochan has a capacity of 46 people, but can currently accommodate 120 people. “The most difficult problem is space. The entire rooftop (a fenced open space above the office) becomes a dormitory at night. There used to be a silkscreen workshop and machinery, but now We can’t do that because we have all the sleeping mats in that space. People are sleeping at the dining room table and between the beams. There are only four toilets for everyone,” she said.
Video from the Casa del Migrante (Migrante House) shelter in San Luis Potosi shows people sleeping on the floor and on cardboard on a basketball court. Cafémin in Mexico City is a shelter that can accommodate up to 100 people and is housing 650 people, with many more camping outside.
“Many migrants are traveling to this country to seek assistance and meet their basic needs, but the Mexican government is not responding to this emergency,” Luna said. “So we’re seeing more and more migrants living on the streets, frankly in conditions of extreme poverty and vulnerability,” he said.
There are encampments near bus terminals, squares, churches, and immigration offices. Janaikel Guerra, from Venezuela, had been staying in a tent outside El Sagrado church for eight days. truth I talked to him. “We are people who don’t fit into the church. While we wait for the appointment, we live on the little food that people bring us.” [Mexican] The government should give us permission to stay here while we wait, but it will take a year to get a transit or humanitarian visa. Therefore, you cannot work while waiting. But they are making us wait here. ”
David Jose Chirino has been staying outside the same church for a month. He said he and his wife were on their way to Mexico, where he was extorted, robbed and kidnapped. “We feel a little bit safer here, but we don’t have much light at night, we don’t have much food, we don’t have anywhere to go to the bathroom. With all this going on, if we go north we might get deported.” said Chirino.
In Matamoras, 2,000 people are waiting in an outdoor encampment along the Rio Grande, without access to toilets or water, exposed to heat, hail, floods and at risk of predation. Shelters along Mexico’s southern border are also crowded with people sleeping on the streets as they wait months for transit visas to obtain documents to travel into the country. A new caravan of 5,000 migrants left Tapachula, Chiapas, for the U.S. border in early November. One participant said he was out of money and couldn’t keep waiting for promises that might never come.
In mid-November, Mexican immigration authorities removed migrants from a large camp outside two bus terminals, destroyed tents and robbed them of their belongings, and transferred them to southern states where the app did not work. They must repeat the journey back to Mexico City, often on foot.
Foster cartels instead of immigrants
The immigration network REDODEM says the treatment of immigrants in the United States and Mexico supports the rise in organized crime. The group argues that countries criminalize migrants, subjecting them to security measures and deportation, making it easier for cartels to take advantage of migrants’ desperation and lack of rights, visas and housing.
With the digital coyote boom, interpersonal attacks are also on the rise. “Organized criminal groups… have increased trafficking fees, but their presence is increasing in different parts of the country, and the amount of trafficking is increasing… Traffickers are increasing their trafficking fees, including in shelters. “We will go to areas where there is a high concentration of immigrants.” Luna.
In October, Human Rights First released a report detailing how the U.S. “asylum ban” has led to an increase in kidnappings, torture, and assaults on people left behind while they wait. It estimates that violence against migrants has increased by 50 percent in the past six months. Criminal organizations often kidnap migrants to demand ransom from their families and torture them if they do not receive payment immediately. It may also punish migrants who try to avoid paying for trafficking services with violence, kidnapping, or even rape and extortion.
Some people who had appointments were absent because they were kidnapped en route, and Mexico’s northern border agency reported in July that public authorities, organized crime groups, and bus companies were colluding to kidnap and kidnap migrants. He accused him of extortion.
In northern Mexico, “some shelters have been forced to close because basically organized crime groups have tried to force them to become part of human trafficking programs,” Luna said. Human Rights First said humanitarian workers in the states of Tamaulipas, Reynosa and Matamoros were forced to stop assisting migrants after receiving threats from the cartels.
Migrants are fleeing unemployment, poverty, violence and the effects of climate change. While U.S. policies of intervention and exploitation in the region have contributed to many of these problems and hold the U.S. truly accountable, “punishing those who try to cross our borders… …It means freeing ourselves from the responsibility of protecting people,” Luna said.
Flores has a clear solution in mind. [U.S.] If governments invested $2 billion in humanitarian infrastructure for all the money they spend on security, we probably wouldn’t see so much violence and extortion. ”
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