IMMIGRATION

Immigration Impact -   Ports of entry along our borders are supposed to be where people in need of protection can come to seek humanitarian relief. But since 2016, every presidential administration has used different tactics to turn people away from ports of entry (POEs) along the U.S.-Mexico border before they even get there. Finally, in October, the Ninth Circuit held that turnbacks are illegal, and that the metering policy that implemented them violated immigration law. The appellate court’s ruling is a long time coming. Al Otro Lado, which provides on-the-ground legal and humanitarian support to asylum seekers, along with a group of individual plaintiffs, have been fighting against U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) use of metering since 2017 through a lawsuit filed by the American Immigration Council and its partners.

Under metering, which was formally in place from 2017 to 2021 but began in 2016, CBP officers stationed at the border turned away asylum seekers attempting to present at POEs. Such turn backs involved intimidation, coercion, physical and verbal abuse, and other unlawful tactics. Because CBP refused to process individuals who had been turned away, it didn’t keep records of impacted people. Instead, asylum seekers often had to place themselves on informal “lists” maintained by different groups on the Mexican side of the border and wait until CBP contacted the list administrator to allow a small number of asylum seekers to present at the POE on a given day.

Washington Post - Nearly half of the estimated 11 million people living illegally in the United States are Mexican, according to analysts. Deporting them is cheaper and easier than sending migrants back to more distant countries that are at odds with Washington, such as Venezuela.In Mexico, migrant advocates are alarmed at what’s coming. Sending millions of jobless Mexicans back to towns they left years ago could create chaos in areas already suffering from poverty and organized crime, they say. “Neither the shelters nor the border area nor Mexico are ready for this,” said Héctor Silva, a Protestant pastor who runs the Senda de Vida migrant shelter in Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas.