Thread: Lured by Hope of U.S. Asylum, Migrants Strain Border Security

Lured by Hope of U.S. Asylum, Migrants Strain Border Security

By JULIA PRESTONAPRIL 10, 2014



Central American migrants, including women carrying infants, were processed by a Border Patrol agent near the Anzalduas Dam in Texas. Women with children are detained separately.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

HIDALGO, Tex. — Border Patrol agents in olive uniforms stood in broad daylight on the banks of the Rio Grande, while on the Mexican side smugglers pulled up in vans and unloaded illegal migrants.

The agents were clearly visible on that recent afternoon, but the migrants were undeterred. Mainly women and children, 45 in all, they crossed the narrow river on the smugglers’ rafts, scrambled up the bluff and turned themselves in, signaling a growing challenge for the immigration authorities.

After six years of steep declines across the Southwest, illegal crossings have soared in South Texas while remaining low elsewhere. The Border Patrol made more than 90,700 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley in the past six months, a 69 percent increase over last year.

The migrants are no longer primarily Mexican laborers. Instead they are Central Americans, including many families with small children and youngsters without their parents, who risk a danger-filled journey across Mexico. Driven out by deepening poverty but also by rampant gang violence, increasing numbers of migrants caught here seek asylum, setting off lengthy legal procedures to determine whether they qualify.

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A Journey North, From Farther South
A Journey North, From Farther South

CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

The new migrant flow, largely from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, is straining resources and confounding Obama administration security strategies that work effectively in other regions. It is further complicating President Obama’s uphill push on immigration, fueling Republican arguments for more border security before any overhaul.

With detention facilities, asylum offices and immigration courts overwhelmed, enough migrants have been released temporarily in the United States that back home in Central America people have heard that those who make it to American soil have a good chance of staying.
“Word has gotten out that we’re giving people permission and walking them out the door,” said Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent who is vice president of the local of the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union. “So they’re coming across in droves.”

In Mexican border cities like Reynosa, just across the river, migrants have become easy prey for Mexican drug cartels that have seized control of the human smuggling business, heightening perils for illegal crossers and security risks for the United States.

At the Rio Grande that afternoon, the smugglers calculatedly sent the migrants across at a point where the water is too shallow for Border Patrol boats that might have turned them back safely at the midriver boundary between the United States and Mexico.

A Border Patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, watched in frustration from a helicopter overhead. “Somebody probably told them they’re going to get released,” he said. As agents booked them, the migrants waited quietly: a Guatemalan mother carrying a toddler with a baby bottle, another with an infant wrapped in blankets.

A 9-year-old girl said she was traveling by herself, hoping to rejoin her mother and two brothers in Louisiana. But she did not know where in Louisiana they were. After a two-week journey from Honduras, her only connection to them was one telephone number on a scrap of paper.

A Honduran woman said the group had followed the instructions of the Mexican smugglers. “They just told us to cross and start walking,” she said.

Illegal Crossings in Rio Grande Valley

Migrants crossing the South Texas border illegally in recent years are no longer primarily from Mexico, but from other countries, mainly in Central America.

FROMMEXICO122,501

FROM
OTHER
COUNTRIES
96,829

Spike caused mostly by a large influx of Brazilians.

FROM
MEXICO
57,624

FROMOTHERCOUNTRIES10,742

’00

’02

’04

’06

’08

’10

’12




Source: U.S. Border Patrol

Other migrants were trying to elude the Border Patrol, and within the hour Chief Ortiz saw his interdiction efforts working according to plan. A short way upriver in deeper water, agents radioed that they had turned back a raft with eight “bodies.”

Moments later a surveillance blimp cruising nearby detected people lying under dense brush. As the helicopter swooped low, the pilot spotted sneakers at the base of the trees. Agents on the ground flushed out nine migrants, all men.

“Technology, air operations, ground units, that’s the complete package,” Chief Ortiz said.

The new migrants head for South Texas because it is the shortest distance from Central America. Many young people ride across Mexico on top of freight trains, jumping off in Reynosa.

The Rio Grande twists and winds, and those who make it across can quickly hide in sugar cane fields and orchards. In many places it is a short sprint to shopping malls and suburban streets where smugglers pick up migrants to continue north.

Border Patrol officials said apprehensions were higher partly because they were catching many more of the illegal crossers. About 3,000 agents in the Rio Grande Valley — 495 new this year — patrol in helicopters and boats, on all-terrain vehicles and horseback. Drones and aerostat blimps are watching from the sky. Under a new strategy, border agencies are working with federal drug agents, the F.B.I. and Texas police to break up Mexican smuggling organizations by prosecuting operatives on this side of the border.

But whereas Mexicans can be swiftly returned by the Border Patrol, migrants from noncontiguous countries must be formally deported and flown home by other agencies. Even though federal flights are leaving South Texas every day, Central Americans are often detained longer.

Women with children are detained separately. But because the nearest facility for “family units” is in Pennsylvania, families apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley are likely to be released while their cases proceed, a senior deportations official said.

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Smugglers sent migrants across the Rio Grande at a point where the water is too shallow for Border Patrol boats that might have turned them back safely at the midriver boundary between the United States and Mexico.CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

Minors without parents are turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which holds them in shelters that provide medical care and schooling and tries to send them to relatives in the United States. The authorities here are expecting 35,000 unaccompanied minors this year, triple the number two years ago.

Under asylum law, border agents are required to ask migrants if they are afraid of returning to their countries. If the answer is yes, migrants must be detained until an immigration officer interviews them to determine if the fear is credible. If the officer concludes it is, the migrant can petition for asylum. An immigration judge will decide whether there is a “well-founded fear of persecution” based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social group.”

Immigration officials said they had set the bar intentionally low for the initial “credible fear” test, to avoid turning away a foreigner in danger. In 2013, 85 percent of fear claims were found to be credible, according to federal figures.

As more Central Americans have come, fear claims have spiked, more than doubling in 2013 to 36,026 from 13,931 in 2012.

The chances have not improved much to win asylum in the end, however. In 2012, immigration courts approved 34 percent of asylum petitions from migrants facing deportation — 2,888 cases nationwide.

Many Central Americans say they are fleeing extortion or forced recruitment by criminal gangs. But immigration courts have rarely recognized those threats as grounds for asylum.

Yet because of immense backlogs in the courts — with the average wait for a hearing currently at about 19 months — claiming fear of return has allowed some Central Americans to prolong their time in the United States.

At the big immigration detention center at Port Isabel, which serves much of the Rio Grande Valley, half of about 1,100 detainees at any given time are asylum seekers, officials said. With the asylum system already stretched, the nearest officers are in Houston, doing interviews by video conference. In 2013, the closest immigration court, in Harlingen, was swamped with new cases, becoming even more backlogged.

Detention beds fill up, and migrants deemed to present no security risk are released under supervision, officials said, with their next court hearing often more than a year away.

UNITED STATES

TEXAS

Rio Grande

Hidalgo

MEXICO

HONDURAS

GUATEMALA
EL SALVADOR

500 MILES





At their now teeming front-line stations along the river, Border Patrol officials readily admit they are not set up to hold migrants for long. Agents and migrants alike refer to the cells there as “hieleras” — freezers.

In cinder-block rooms with concrete benches and a toilet in the corner, there are no chairs, beds, showers or hot food. On a recent day, migrants caked in river mud were packed shoulder to shoulder, many on the floor, trying to warm up in space blankets the Border Patrol provides. Some held their fingers to their lips to signal hunger.



But agents said they have accelerated their work so more migrants are deported directly from Border Patrol stations in as little as two days.

Officials said few migrants — only 4 percent — claim fear of returning when they are with the Border Patrol.

Rather, migrants are claiming fear after they are sent to longer-term detention centers like Port Isabel, leading officials to suspect they have been coached by other detainees.

But lawyers for asylum seekers said migrants frequently report that Border Patrol agents never asked them about their concerns, or that they were too exhausted or intimidated to express them in the hours after being caught.

“A lot of times these people had very real, legitimate fears,” said Kimi Jackson, director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation Project, known as ProBAR. “But it seems to them they were not asked the questions by the Border Patrol in the type of situation where they could talk freely.”

Lawyers said officials had started to make it far harder for migrants to win release by requiring many more to post bond, with rates rising to as high as $10,000.

That news had not reached migrants at a shelter run by nuns in Reynosa. Several said they were heading to the United States to seek “asilo.” They could say truthfully they were afraid to go home.

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CreditTodd Heisler/The New York Times

Border Capture, Seen From Above

On a helicopter with its pilot and a Border Patrol chief, a reporter and photographer for The New York Times watched migrants crossing the Rio Grande and turning themselves in.

Luis Fernando Herrera Perdomo, 19, said he fled Honduras after gang members shot and killed a brother who was sleeping in the bed next to his.

A 29-year-old former soldier from El Salvador, who asked to be identified only as Jesús, said he left his wife and three children to escape a gang that came gunning for him because he arrested some of its members while in the army.

In Reynosa, the dangers had only multiplied. José Rubén Hernández, 32, said he had been kidnapped for two weeks while Mexican smugglers extorted $10,000 in ransom from his frantic family in Honduras.

“We are a gold mine for the cartels,” he said.

Other migrants had been imprisoned in a smugglers’ stash house until Mexican military troops stormed it to free them. Two Hondurans who had just arrived at the shelter displayed new bruises, saying they had been beaten that morning in a rail yard by smugglers associated with the Zetas, a brutal Mexican cartel.

But the migrants still intended to hire new smugglers and try to cross. “I’m still alive and I have faith in God, so I will try to make it over to the other side,” Mr. Herrera said.

Chief Ortiz said agents were speeding deportations to change the message reaching Central America.

“It cost the migrant an awful lot of money and time and effort to get here,” he said. “If I send somebody back to Guatemala or Honduras, chances are they’re going to sit there and say, ‘You know what, I don’t think I’m going to try this again.’ ”

“The word may get out,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/11/us...w&rref=us&_r=0

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NYT: Illegal Immigrants Crossing Into South Texas 'in Droves'

A Border Patrol agent surveys an area of the Rio Grande River near McAllen, Texas.

Friday, 11 Apr 2014 10:58 AM
By Drew MacKenzie

Thousands of illegal immigrants from Central America are crossing the Rio Grande into the United States every month after hearing reports that people who make it across the border are being allowed to remain in America.

Fueling GOP demands for more stringent border security before any immigration reform bill is passed, the number of illegal crossings in South Texas has suddenly soared this year after six years of relatively deep declines across the southwest region, according to The New York Times.

The Border Patrol reported that 90,700 migrants were seized in the Rio Grande Valley in the past six months, a 69 percent increase over last year. The agency has no idea how many people actually made a successful crossing and then vanished into the American heartland.

The migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have put such a severe strain on U.S. immigration prevention resources, including detention facilities, asylum offices, and special courts, that scores of them are being released into the United States temporarily, the Times reported.

"Word has gotten out that we're giving people permission and walking them out the door," Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent who is vice president of the local National Border Patrol Council, the agents' union, told the Times. "So they're coming across in droves."

There was a time when the majority of the illegals were Mexican laborers looking for work. That's no longer the case, according to the Times. Now couples from Central America with small children, and youngsters without parents, are daring to make the dangerous journey across Mexico to the United States.

They are driven to flee their own country and gamble on being caught entering the United States illegally by the growing problem of poverty in their own homeland, along with the threat of increasing gang violence, according to the Times.

To embolden their courage, the would-be Americans have learned that they can seek asylum in the United States by claiming that they live in fear of being killed back home, the Times reported. The hordes of asylum seekers have resulted in protracted legal procedures, further putting a strain on limited immigration resources.

With younger migrants riding on top of freight trains, they pick South Texas to make their crossing because it's the shortest distance from Central America.

But before they even get to America they have the added danger of falling prey to the Mexican drug cartels in such border towns as Reynosa, which have assumed control of the lucrative human smuggling trade and don't care whether the migrants are caught once they have their money.

The Times revealed a recent case where border agents were standing on one side of the Rio Grande while 45 migrants were loaded from a van onto a boat in full view on the other side of the river. The water was too shallow for a border patrol vessel to stop them half-way across, and so they were arrested as soon as their boat reached the U.S. side.

Although illegal Mexicans are often returned quickly by the Border Patrol, migrants from "noncontiguous" countries have to be officially deported and flown home by other U.S. agencies, a far longer process.

Women and children are detained separately, and sent to the nearest "family units" facility in Pennsylvania, where they are likely to be released while their cases are pending, a senior deportations official told the Times.

Children without parents are handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services, which arranges medical care and schooling, and then sends them to American relatives where possible while their cases are processed. Unaccompanied minors are expected to number 35,000 this year, triple the number two years ago, according to the Times.

By law, border agents must ask the illegals whether they are afraid to return to their country. If the answer is yes, an investigation is conducted to seek the veracity of the claim, and an immigration judge will eventually decide whether the migrant can stay in the United States based on a "well-founded fear of persecution" due to his race, religion, or politics.

In 2013, 85 percent of "fear claims" were found to be credible, which may be the reason that such claims from Central American migrants have more than doubled in 2013 to 36,026 from 13,931 in 2012. In 2012, 34 percent of asylum petitions were approved, 2,888 cases nationwide, according to the Times.

The United States has stepped up border patrols in the Rio Grande Valley in recent months while increasing the number of agents by 500, to 3,000, who patrol the border in helicopters, boats, all-terrain vehicles, and horseback while drones and aerostat blimps keep an eye from the sky.

Although Texas police also have started targeting Mexican smuggling organizations for prosecution on this side of the border, many migrants are still successfully making it across the Rio Grande to fulfill their American dream.

After hiding in sugarcane fields and orchards, the Times noted that they make a quick dash to a nearby shopping mall, where smuggling groups pick them up for a trip north into a whole new world.

Editor's Note: Experience the True Battle on the Border with this Powerful New Movie

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Tex.../11/id/565064/