San Diego border crossings overwhelmed by asylum seekers: 'We can’t give up'

Kate Morrissey

So many people fleeing persecution in their home countries have asked for help in San Ysidro in recent weeks that federal officials have not been able to process all of them, leaving some stranded and running out of money while they wait in Tijuana.U.S. border officials are trying to work through the backlog, but they can go only as fast as migrants can be processed and moved from temporary holding cells to immigration detention. When someone arrives at a port without documents for entry, CBP officials interview that person, take photographs and fingerprints and check law enforcement databases for records. If the person reports being afraid to go back to his or her home country, CBP is required by law to transfer that migrant to other federal agencies for a potential asylum case. Most of the asylum process happens once the person has been transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, and back-ups in that transfer system can leave CBP with limited space in its temporary holding cells at the border. Large groups of migrants arriving at once can also clog the system. In the fall of 2016, San Diego’s ports were overwhelmed by thousands of Haitian migrants. In partnership with Mexican officials, CBP established a ticketing system that scheduled appointments for migrants to be processed. As of November, the most recent data available from CBP, arrivals hadn’t reached the levels of the wave of arriving Haitians. In October 2016, more than 6,000 people came to San Diego’s ports of entry asking to come in despite not having documents permitting entry to the U.S. That number included asylum seekers — CBP does not distinguish between those seeking asylum and other “inadmissibles” in its data collection. (In addition to asylum seekers, inadmissibles are those looking for better economic opportunities or anyone else who has asked to enter the U.S. at a port without the proper documents.) In November 2017, the number of people deemed inadmissible was 2,824, more than double the low of 1,313 reached in March of this year...more