Apprehensions at Border Reach Highest Level in at
Least 15 Years
More migrant families are entering the United States
and being released, new figures for March show, as thousands of children remain
in detention facilities.
Zolan
Kanno-Youngs
By Zolan
Kanno-Youngs
April 2,
2021
WASHINGTON
— The Biden administration apprehended more than 170,000 migrants at the
southwest border in March, the most in any month for at least 15 years and up
nearly 70 percent from February, as thousands of children remained backed up in
detention facilities and border agents released an increasing number of migrant
families into the United States, government documents obtained by The New York
Times show.
More than
18,700 unaccompanied children and teenagers were taken into custody last month
after crossing the border, including at port entries, nearly double the roughly
9,450 minors detained in February and more than four times the 4,635
unaccompanied minors who crossed in March of last year, the documents show.
The sharp
increases underscored the political and logistical challenges to the
administration of managing the flow of people coming from Central America,
including the need to more quickly move unaccompanied children and teenagers
into emergency shelters at military sites and conventions centers throughout
the United States. Many of the children are seeking to join parents, relatives
or other people they know who are already in the country.
But the increasing
number of family members traveling together is creating another issue for the
administration. For much of the winter, even as the United States took in the
unaccompanied minors, administration officials invoked an emergency rule put in
place by the Trump administration during the pandemic to turn away most migrant
families and single adults crossing the border.
The
situation is rapidly becoming more complicated. For one thing, the sheer volume
of families arriving is growing fast, with border officials encountering more
than 53,000 migrants traveling as families in March, more than double the
roughly 19,250 in the prior month.
American
officials are also coping with a change in the law in Mexico, which has
tightened its conditions for accepting Central American families expelled by
the United States. Because of the new law in Mexico and a lack of space in
shelters there for children, the United States can no longer send most families
with a child under the age of 7 back across the border.
At the same
time, the United States does not currently have the capacity to detain large
numbers of families, leaving border officials with few options other than to
release them with orders to appear in the future to have their cases heard.
“We’re
entering phase two of this extraordinary migration event,” said Cris Ramón, an
immigration consultant based in Washington. “At this point, the scope of the
individuals who are coming means the administration is going to have to now
address the challenges of not only building capacity for unaccompanied
children, but they’re going to have to expand this capacity for families.”
The
overcrowding in facilities has prompted border agents to release more families
into communities along the border, according to officials. Some of those who
have been released were not fully informed about the details of their upcoming
court appearances, those officials said.
Authorities
have dropped off families with children at bus stations in border communities,
where they then continue their journeys north to relatives in the United
States. Border officials encountered more than 1,360 migrants traveling as part
of families on Sunday and expelled just 219, according to the documents. On
March 26, more than 2,100 families were detained and just 200 were turned back
south.
“We are
seeing the numbers increase day by day. They increased tremendously, especially
in March,” said Hugo Zurita, the executive director of Good Neighbor Settlement
House in Brownsville, Texas, which has been providing hot meals and items, such
as clothing, hand sanitizer and masks, to migrant families at the city’s bus
station.
Republican
members of Congress, vowing to make the issue central to their efforts to
retake control of Congress, have repeatedly accused the administration of
encouraging the surge in migration with President Biden’s pledge to have more
compassionate policies toward migrants than those imposed under President
Donald J. Trump.
“They’re certainly going to be using this as a weapon
against us,” said Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas. “It’s taking
away from Biden’s good work. He’s done a hell of a job on vaccines. It’s taken
us away from the messaging we’ve had.”
The Biden
administration has continued to use a pandemic-emergency rule to rapidly expel
single adults, who continued to make up the majority of those caught at the
border in March. Advocates for immigrants have criticized the rule as breaking
with immigration laws that say migrants are entitled to apply for asylum upon reaching
U.S. soil.
The White
House has talked to at least one member of Congress about the possibility of
expelling 16 and 17-year-olds to Mexico, according to a person familiar with
the discussions.
The
administration has also framed its response as focused on tackling the root
causes of migration, appointing Vice President Kamala Harris to work with
leaders in the region to bolster the economy in Central America and restarting
an Obama-era program that allows some children to apply in their home region for
permission to live in the United States with a parent or other relative.
“We are not
naïve about the challenge but what our focus is on is solutions and actions to
help address the unaccompanied minors who are coming across the border and
making it less of an incentive to come,” Jen Psaki, the White House press
secretary, said on Friday.
The
crossings by unaccompanied minors present the more severe logistical challenge
for Mr. Biden. Unlike single adults or migrants traveling as a family, the
administration by law is responsible for the care of unaccompanied children and
teenagers until it can match them with a sponsor in the United States.
Nearly
5,000 children and teenagers were in detention centers that were originally set
up to hold adults on Thursday, including more than 3,300 held longer than the
maximum 72 hours allowed under federal law, according to government documents.
Within 72 hours, they are supposed to be transferred to the shelter system run
by the Department of Health and Human Services.
More than
13,300 minors were held in the shelter system on Friday, according to the
department. The administration is projecting it will need more than 35,000 beds
for minors in border facilities and emergency shelters by the end of May,
according to documents.
Alejandro
Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said last month that the
administration was expecting this year to encounter the most migrants at the
border in 20 years.
“There’s no
break on this,” said Ronald D. Vitiello, a former acting director of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement and chief of the Border Patrol under the
Trump administration. “It just gets a lot worse. It’s really unfortunate.”
Mr. Biden
has now deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency to find additional
shelter space for the minors in an effort called “Operation Apollo.” The
administration is still assessing housing migrants at new facilities at a hotel
in Dallas, Fort Benning in Georgia and the Sleep Train Arena in Sacramento,
according to government documents.
“They
should’ve been planning for this a month ago,” Mr. Ramón said. “Now they have
to be thinking two or three months ahead to have a solution to deal with this.”
Eileen
Sullivan contributed reporting from Washington, and Miriam Jordan from Los
Angeles.
Zolan
Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent covering a range of domestic and
international issues in the Biden White House, including homeland security and
extremism. He joined The Times in 2019 as the homeland security correspondent. @KannoYoungs
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