SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Last week in a federal courtroom in San Diego, Al Otro Lado, a binational migrant advocacy group, filed two lawsuits against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The legal action alleges Mayorkas, DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are forcing migrants to cross the border between ports of entry because it’s not letting them ask for asylum at border crossings.
As a result, according to the group, hundreds of migrants are crossing the border daily, and then having to wait at makeshift camps like the ones near Jacumba, California, in the mountains east of San Diego.
“They are told by Border Patrol agents to wait in the camps otherwise they’ll be deported,” said attorney Erika Pinheiro with Al Otro Lado. “These are people who by and large do not have access to the asylum system through ports of entry,”
Pinheiro says DHS is not giving migrants much of a choice by making it nearly impossible to ask for asylum at a port of entry.
“You can only access asylum through a port of entry with a CBP One appointment. Unfortunately, that app is sketchy, and it’s only available in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, so the majority of people you see here today don’t speak those languages and would not have the option to present themselves at a port of entry.”
Pinheiro alleges that DHS is knowingly breaking the law.
“The courts cannot force the Department of Homeland Security to accept asylum-seekers at the ports of entry even though that is what the law says — processing people at the ports of entry would be a much more orderly and humane process than what we’re seeing here today.”
Asylum seekers wait to get picked up by Border Patrol agents near Jacumba, Calif. (Salvador Rivera/Border Report)
Pinheiro blames the Biden administration for dragging its feet and for making it harder for migrants to seek asylum.
It’s “unfortunate that we’re seeing that from the Biden administration when we really had some hopes that the situation for asylum-seekers would improve at the border, but unfortunately, they seem really committed to creating the chaos that we’re seeing here,” said Pinheiro, “Because if individuals were processed at the ports we wouldn’t have so many people crossing between ports of entry.”
Border Report reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment on Al Otro Lado’s lawsuit, but it said it can’t comment on pending litigation.
Read: Read More