As U.S. authorities continue to enforce the Biden administration's crackdown on asylum-seeking, rejecting practically all migrants while the daily amount of border apprehensions surpass the 2,500 mark, shelters on Mexico's side of the border are seeing varying scenarios.
According to The Associated Press, while some south of Texas and California still have much space, those south of Arizona, in Sonora, are becoming overcrowded as a result of 500 daily deportations.
This is a result of Mexicans representing a large percentage of detentions in Arizona, as authorities only have to turn them away rather than arranging a flight to send them to their countries of origin.
"We're having to turn people away because we can't, we don't have the room for all the people who need shelter," Joanna Williams, executive director of Kino Border Initiative, told the outlet. Many of the facilities described in the article can hold about 100 migrants a day.
But not all are being deported. A recent report by NBC News detailed that authorities are releasing others into the U.S. while they pursue asylum claims in immigration courts due to a lack of viable alternatives. Asides from this, officials are also not sending some migrants back to their countries of origin, as intended by the measure.
In some sections of the border, Central American migrants from countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador are being sent back to Mexico. Without funding from Congress, the official said, authorities will continue with this course of action. Many migrants not accepted by Mexico will be let into the U.S., he added.
Concretely, migrants from Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean are being sent back to Mexico, while migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere are being released into the U.S.
Advocates worry that more people will stay in Mexico close to the U.S. while trying to get an appointment through CBP One, the application to legally apply for asylum in the country. The app only doles out 1,450 appointments a day, and some migrants have been trying to get one for about eight months.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denied last week that the government will increase the amount of applications following the executive order.
Speaking to press, Mayorkas said the government has "limited capacity" to process the requests and that it also faces "a series of operational and political restrictions."
Immigration advocates are among those who have been highly critical of the measure, with the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) emphasizing that the figures sought have been hardly met throughout the century and enforcement will violate the law.
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