EL PASO (United States): The US-Mexico border appeared calm on Friday as tough asylum rules come into force, with senior officials in Washington expressing confidence that the new system would work.
Thousands of people remained on the Mexican side of the frontier hoping to enter the United States, but the chaotic surge of migrants that right-wing politicians predicted failed to materialise.
“We are seeing people arrive at our southern border, as we expected, as we have been planning for,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Friday.
“We are screening and vetting them and if they do not have a basis to remain, we will remove them very swiftly.”
Arrangements at the border changed at midnight, as the pandemic-era Title 42 — a health provision that allowed for immediate expulsion — expired.
In its place is a regularised immigration rule that threatens illegal border-crossers with five-year bans and possible criminal charges, and requires asylum-seekers to apply from outside the country.
Up to 10,000 people have tried to enter the country every day over the past week, border officials told the US media.
Many turned themselves in to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) hoping to be registered and “paroled” — let go because authorities did not have the capacity to house them or expel them.
In among the relief, there was also tragedy.
US officials said a teenage boy had died in the custody of Health and Human Services, which takes care of children entering the country unaccompanied.
The department gave no details, but Honduran Foreign Minister Enrique Reina said a 17-year-old boy had died in an HHS facility in Florida.
Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the number of US-bound migrants crossing his country was ebbing.
He said around 26,500 migrants were waiting in Mexican cities along the long US frontier, and the situation was “calm and normal”.
Mexico’s national immigration agency has ordered its offices to stop issuing documents authorising migrants to transit through the country, officials said, in an apparent attempt to curb flows to the US border. – AFP
