On the eve of the change of government: caravans of migrants begin their journey to the USA again

Well, it didn't take long. A new border crisis is brewing ahead of President-elect Joe Biden's inauguration, reports New York Post.

Photo: Shutterstock

Migrant caravans are forming in Honduras, which was hit by a pair of devastating hurricanes last month, exacerbating the economic hardships caused by COVID-19. Faced with the collapse, many Hondurans chose to defy local travel bans and head north.

“People are no longer afraid of the coronavirus,” one caravan organizer told Bloomberg. “They are starving because they have lost everything and some cities are still flooded.”

The organizer added that migrants are well versed with changes in US border policy: “When there is a change of government in the US or Mexico, caravans start moving. They are testing the waters to see how the authorities react. "

By now, Central Americans should have a pretty good idea of ​​how the Biden administration will respond—and not just because smugglers called “coyotes” are keeping migrants well informed in hopes of profiting from their desperation.

On the campaign trail, Biden pledged to end President Trump's strict immigration and border policies, which, along with extreme travel restrictions due to the pandemic, helped bring illegal immigration to historic lows after a surge last spring. The number of migrants is increasing again as conditions deteriorate in Central America.

Specifically, Biden said he would stop construction of the border wall, restore DACA, increase the refugee population and make it easier for migrants to apply for asylum. Biden has pledged to end Team Trump's "Remain in Mexico" program, which requires Central Americans seeking asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated in the United States. The program's goal is to prevent asylum seekers from escaping before their court dates.

To understand why the Trump administration created the program, it's worth learning a little about the background. During the Obama administration, a sharp increase in the number of unaccompanied minors and Central American families seeking asylum in 2014 initially prompted authorities to detain families.

On the subject: How Biden plans to change the US immigration system

But when a federal judge ruled in 2015 that minors cannot be detained for more than 20 days, with or without parents, the Obama administration adopted a catch and release policy: when families were caught illegally crossing the border, a few days later their released into the United States with an order to appear before an immigration judge at some point in the future. After their release, many of these would-be asylum seekers simply disappeared.

In the spring of 2018, Trump's team attempted to end the Catch and Release Principle by first splitting up families at the border and detaining both parents and children, sparking intense backlash and litigation that convinced Trump to end the policy within months. ...

But ending family separation did not solve the asylum crisis. Due to the increased incidence of illegal border crossings in early 2019, Trump, in collaboration with the Mexican authorities, began rolling out the Stay in Mexico program. He also pressured Mexico to secure its southern border with Guatemala, threatening to impose duties on imports from Mexico if the country did not do more to control illegal immigration.

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Mexico agreed to cooperate, resulting in a sharp decline in illegal immigration since June last year. Travel restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic have also helped slow border crossings this spring and summer.

But the usual drivers of illegal immigration from Mexico and Central America—economic hardship, grinding poverty and natural disasters—are once again pushing people to seek a better life in the United States. The number of people detained or found inadmissible along the southwest border has increased for six straight months, from 17 in April to more than 000 in October.

They come because they have no jobs and, in some cases, no homes because of the hurricanes, because relatives and friends in the United States tell them they will find work in this country. The refugees are coming because the coyotes and smuggling networks that profit from illegal immigration offer to take them across the border—for a price.

But now they are heading to the United States also because Biden has promised to make it easier for them to enter.

These are the first caravans from Central America that the Biden administration will have to deal with, but they will not be the last.

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