The Biden administration is facing a rapidly developing problem at the U.S.-Mexico border as a result of one Mexican region’s refusal to take back Central American families who were apprehended illegally crossing into the United States.
Border Patrol agents working in the southern border’s busiest region for illegal migration stopped returning to Mexico families with children 12 years old and younger and were so overwhelmed that they began to release families out of the backdoors of holding stations, according to Mark Morgan, the former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Morgan, now a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told the Washington Examiner that development began several days ago.
“Mexico is raising the flag, saying, ‘Hey, this is a capacity issue. The numbers are just too great,'” said Morgan, adding that the Border Patrol averaged 3,000 apprehensions per day during a three-week stretch in January. “We haven’t seen numbers like that since sometime in 2019.”
“Whenever feasible, we are seeking alternatives to detention in cases where the law allows,” CBP spokeswoman Stephanie Malin told the Washington Post.
The backdoor releases are the result of a change in Mexican law that prohibits children and families from being detained in Mexican detention facilities, according to the Washington Post. Spacing limitations prompted by the coronavirus pandemic are putting government shelters at capacity faster than normal, forcing them to turn away many. Teenagers and parents must be kept together, making shelters even more overcrowded in Mexico. In response, Mexican authorities told Border Patrol agents to stop immediately removing families along the Rio Grande Valley area of Texas.
It is the first time that Border Patrol has been forced to detain a sizable demographic, families, since last March, when it implemented an initiative known as Title 42, which allowed its agents to send back all illegal crossers on the basis that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention ruled that U.S. facilities could not safely hold people. It comes in the midst of a national increase in the number of people arriving at the border over the past year.
At the height of the 2019 border crisis in May of that year, 132,000 people were apprehended illegally crossing the border. Monthly apprehension rates have increased after dropping earlier this year and were around 80,000 for January, according to Morgan. A lower percentage of the January numbers are families compared to the rates seen during the 2019 crisis.
“The increase is still concentrated in single adults, and we know that recidivism is high among the single adults — they try again and again,” said Migration Policy Institute policy analyst Sarah Pierce. “The administration is preparing for [unaccompanied children] increases, but there have not been huge rises in families arriving at the southern border. This development, depending on what happens next, could change that.”
The Biden administration does not yet have a solution when it comes to responding to a large influx of people on the border though it opposes the widespread use of detention, especially on families or children. It recently announced it would no longer force asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for months while their cases progress through the U.S. legal system.
“The most alarming thing is that our resources and infrastructure at the southern border are not equipped to handle big surges of vulnerable populations,” said Pierce. She said the government should prioritize creating a way for people to seek asylum, as they had not been able to under the Trump administration since last spring, as well as turning away those who do not seek asylum “quickly and humanely.”
Theresa Cardinal Brown, former policy adviser for the CBP commissioner and head of immigration and cross-border policy at the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center think tank, compared the Biden administration’s handling of migration to “flying the plane while you’re rebuilding it.”
Brown said the government is likely considering what to do if other Mexican states or cities follow suit and the U.S. is no longer able to turn around everyone it interdicts.
Those taken into Border Patrol custody are not to be held more than 72 hours. Normally, most people would be transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for longer detention, but because ICE is underfunded and courts have blocked some facilities from detaining more than a certain number of people, many would have to be released across the country. Morgan said the loss of Title 42, if other Mexican states follow suit, would be “catastrophic.”
“We will be full-on catch-release,” said Morgan. “The Border Patrol facilities will be overwhelmed in two or three days. And they’ll have to release them at bus stations and shelters locally, along the southwest border just like we were doing the crisis 2019.”
ICE is funded to sleep 32,000 people, but that number is further broken down by adults and families. If it exceeds its bed limit for adults, it cannot put an adult in the family detention area.
The Border Report said Wednesday that the city of McAllen, at the center of the Rio Grande Valley, had sent 10,000 coronavirus tests to nonprofit organizations where migrants were being dropped off after being released from Border Patrol in recent days. The city received the tests after reaching out to Gov. Greg Abbott about the influx of people in the community. Migrants who test positive are being sent to local hotels to quarantine before they take public transportation to their final destinations in the U.S. However, many boarded buses before tests were available.
Right now, Border Patrol is not testing anyone who comes into custody or who is immediately sent back to Mexico. Brown said carrying out tests could also be a challenge because most take 24 to 48 hours to get results and migrants are not to be kept in custody more than 72 hours.
