WASHINGTON, April 2 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The US administration is intensifying measures to curb the flow of Central American asylum seekers crossing into the United States from Mexico, officials said, including sending more people back to Mexico to wait for their asylum claims to be heard by US courts.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said the US Customs and Border Protection agency will speed up the reassignment of 750 officers to parts of the border dealing with the largest numbers of immigrants, a shift the administration first announced last week.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to close the border if Mexico does not stop a surge of people, often travelling as families from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Closing the border would potentially disrupt millions of legal border crossings and billions of dollars in trade.
One policy put in place earlier this year to return asylum seekers to Mexico, dubbed the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), will be “immediately” expanded by “hundreds of additional migrants per day above current rates,” Nielsen said in a statement on Monday.
The policy is already being challenged in court by civil rights groups. As of March 26, approximately 370 migrants had been returned to Mexico since the programme began in late January, a Mexican official said last week.
Trump administration officials say the MPP is a way to address the failings of the current system, which they claim encourages illegal immigration.
Families that claim asylum are often released into the United States because of limits on how long children can be held in detention, allowing them to stay for years while their cases move through a backlogged immigration court system even though many claims are ultimately denied.
The administration is hoping policies of deterrence will reduce the number of people who turn themselves in to US border agents, overwhelming the capacity of processing centres along the southern border.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday that Mexico will help to regulate the flow of Central Americans passing through its territory to the United States.
He said the root causes behind the phenomenon, which include violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, must be tackled.
In a move Democrats and Republicans in Congress have said would be counterproductive, the US State Department cut aid to the three countries after Trump accused them of having “set up” migrant caravans and sending them north. — NNN-AGENCIES
