US government faces “operational obstacles” in deporting immigrants

The United States government is facing “operational obstacles” to comply with the measure imposed by Joe Biden and deport more immigrants who do not meet asylum requests at the border.

Border Patrol arrested Gerardo Henao 14 hours after President Joe Biden suspended the asylum process at the U.S.-Mexico border last week. But instead of being summarily deported, he was dropped off by agents the next day at a bus station in San Diego, where he caught a bus to the airport for a flight to Newark, New Jersey.

Henao, who said he abandoned his jewelry business in Medellín, Colombia, because of constant extortion attempts, had one thing to settle on: the scarcity of deportation flights to that country. Lack of resources, diplomatic constraints and logistical obstacles make it difficult for the Biden administration to impose its sweeping measure on a large scale.

The agent processed release documents ordering him to appear in immigration court on October 23 in New Jersey. He asked the immigrant why he fled Colombia, but did not pursue that line of questioning. “They took my photo, my fingerprints and that was it.” Many migrants released that day came from China, India, Colombia and Ecuador. One group included men from Mauritania, Sudan and Ethiopia.

The policy, which came into effect on Wednesday the 5th, has an exception for “operational considerations”, official language that recognizes that the government does not have the money and authority to deport all subjects, especially people from countries in South America, Asia, Africa and Europe, who appear at the border to ask for asylum.

Under the measure, asylum is suspended when arrests for illegal crossings reach 2,500 per day. It ends when the average is below 1,500 for a consecutive week. The Department of Homeland Security said in a detailed document outlining the ban that “demographics and nationalities encountered at the border have a significant impact” on its ability to deport people.

Thousands of migrants have been deported under the ban so far, according to two senior Department of Homeland Security officials who briefed reporters on Friday on condition they not be identified. There were 17 deportation flights, including one to Uzbekistan. The deportees include people from Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru and Mexico.

Border officials have been instructed to give the highest priority to detaining migrants who can be easily deported, followed by “hard to remove” nationalities that require at least five days to issue travel documents, and then “very difficult to remove” nationalities. to remove” whose governments do not accept US deportation flights. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted 679 deportation flights from January through May, nearly 60% of them to Guatemala and Honduras, according to Seek for on the Border, an advocacy group that analyzes flight data. There were 46 flights to Colombia, 42 to Ecuador and 12 to Peru, a relatively small number considering that tens of thousands of people enter these countries illegally every month.

// Fonte: Assoc iated Pr ess.