Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday he’s ordering his agency to allow “thousands” of additional migrants to enter the US legally while opening new facilities in Central and South America to process asylum-seekers.
Mayorkas said a border rush is likely when the Title 42 COVID-19 policy expires May 11, but that the new program may mitigate a fresh spike in illegal entries — even though the details remain fuzzy.
“This is a hemispheric challenge that demands hemispheric solutions,” Mayorkas told reporters before adding: “Let me be clear, our border is not open and will not be open after May 11.”
The DHS chief’s outline also did not include any remedy for a years-long backlog in resolving asylum cases — with new arrivals to New York waiting up to a decade just to get a court date.
Under the plan, prospective migrants will be told to go to processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia to be prescreened and potentially allowed into the US to await final rulings on their claims of persecution in their homelands.
Centers in other countries are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. --->READ MORE HERE
The Biden administration on Thursday announced plans to establish immigration processing centers throughout Latin America to help slow down the number of migrants coming to the U.S.
The regional processing centers in Guatemala and Colombia should be up and running in the coming weeks, said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a joint press conference. Additional details will be announced in the coming weeks about how many centers they will set up as they negotiate with additional countries. A memo obtained by POLITICO suggested that other hubs could be in Ecuador and eventually Costa Rica.
U.S. international partners, including the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration, will screen migrants at these centers and determine if they qualify for entry before the migrants can try to move on to the U.S. southern border. If eligible, migrants will be referred for refugee resettlement or other lawful pathways such as parole programs, family reunification or existing labor pathways. Migrants will also receive local information about host countries and available social services.
The announcement comes just two weeks before a seismic shake-up in border policy, the lifting of Title 42. The Trump-era border policy has been used more than 2 million times to expel asylum-seeking migrants on public health grounds.
The U.S. expects to initially screen at least 5,000 or 6,000 migrants a month at the new processing centers, Mayorkas said. --->READ MORE HERE
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