CBP Under Trump Administration Plans not to Increase Its Capacity to Process Immigrants Stranded at the Border

The U.S. agency in charge of handling the number of migrants attempting to cross by caravan through the California Mexico border has stated that it does not plan to increase its ability, as well as capacity, to process and further house the more than the 150 Central Americans currently waiting to be processed in Tijuana.

Obama era

In retrospect, migrant surges during the Obama administration handled the situation differently by putting in place temporary holding facilities, referred to as tent cities, before sending more officials towards the border in order to process the asylum claims and requests.

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As of the moment, the more than one hundred Central American men, women, as well as children are sleeping on the concrete while on the Mexican side of the border. That being said, the U.S Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued a statement that it has no future plans to increase its ability to upturn the flow of migrants entering the United States.

Full to the brim

On Sunday last week, the CBP further stated that it had come to its full capacity for processing on the San Ysidro port of entry; which happens to be the processing center from which migrants are able to enter the United States while coming from Tijuana.

Officials Overwhelmed

In a press statement, the CBP Commissioner, Kevin McAleenan reiterated their current position by stating that at the moment, the San Ysidro capacity is overwhelmed and has reached its capacity for the CBP officials to have the ability to introduce additional persons currently travelling without the right entry documentation into the port of entry for further processing.

He continued to state that depending on the current port circumstances at the time at which the said individuals arrived, they had to wait on the Mexican side of the border as CBP officials worked to process them within their facilities.

Negligible impact

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which happens to be the body in charge of handling all asylum claims, stated that it had sent additional officials to San Ysidro. However, immigration advocates on the ground say that the increase of officials is having a negligible impact; since these migrants have no means to cross the border in order for them to make their claim.

In fact, one Republican congressional aide stated that the Trump administration’s strategy was to force migrants to wait. This way, the administration will want the American public to see the number of people attempting to exploit the loophole present in the asylum system.

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Previous swells

This is not the first time such a situation has taken place. The spring of 2014, followed by the fall of 2016, were periods marked with high border crossings, of which the Obama administration responded by increasing the resources to minimize the bottleneck currently being observed.

For example, in the Rio Grande Valley, the CBP constructed temporary tents to shelter the migrants that were being processed at the time.

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In a statement, the former director for Citizenship and Immigration Services, Leon Rodriguez, stated that the Obama administration had a better handling of the situation by predicting the periods of immigration swells, and handling them accordingly by minimizing the processing times for asylum claims.