Clearly there has been a lot going on with the US-Mexico border lately. Court cases over the federal government’s policies are galore, Secretary of Homeland Security Mayorkas has been talking about the Biden administration’s plan for the end of Title 42 for what feels like months now and border crossings are expected to triple in the coming weeks. With all of this going on and Texas Impact restarting our Courts & Ports program several of the staff, including myself, went down to the Rio Grande Valley this week to investigate how the area is handling all the change and how we could be of some help.
With the upcoming end of Title 42 the daily amount of border crossings are expected to triple from 6,000 to 18,000 per day. In response to the expected surge, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been releasing several directives and strategies including changes to asylum regulations, giving directive on prosecutorial discretion and initiating a 6 pillar plan. We were able to witness the effect of some of these changes first hand.
On our trip we were able to see several court cases in person. We saw two individual hearings in ongoing cases at the Harlingen Immigration Court and then witnessed the first hearing for seven respondents in the Brownsville Migrant Protection Protocol (MPP) Court. In the Harlingen court we witnessed two cases in a row use the new directive on prosecutorial discretion to shorten the court proceedings and in one case to dismiss the trial all together. The new directive on prosecutorial discretion issued at the beginning of April outlines new definitions of what are considered “priority cases” for the DHS, or cases involving individuals that are defined as threats. If a case has a nonpriority respondent, or not seen as a threat, then DHS is more willing to allow them to stay sooner in the court proceedings as a means of speeding up their processing.
This is one example of several in which we are seeing a change in focus from deportation to more effective processing. While this is a welcome change, one thing that was still painfully clear to us on our latest trip is that this comes while our immigration system is still experiencing years worth of backlog. It seems that it is not only the change in administration that has made the courts more willing to engage the public, but also due to the fact that the courts need all the help they can get as outlined in Secretary Mayorkas’s 6 pillar plan which includes more collaboration with nonprofits.
Another section of our trip was dedicated to meeting with our partners in Matamoros at Ayudándoles a Triunfar. When we talked with Glady Cañas, the head of the organization’s branch in Matamoros, she told us about how it is impossible to get anyone over the border without having a medical emergency. Glady helps refugees legally pursue entry while also helping them survive in Mexico, which is no easy feat. Glady told us about how difficult it is to help migrants when there is little to no help from the Mexican government and active organized crime. This was not lost on us when all but one of the respondents we saw in MPP court stated that they were afraid to wait in Mexico for their court hearings. Ayudándoles a Triunfar is still working with hundreds of migrants and expects more to come.
We are glad for the change in disposition of the courts, but despite these changes our processing capacity is still woefully lacking and underprepared. Strong arm border tactics like those of the previous administration and by Gov. Abbott have a long history of only exacerbating the problem and wasting resources, but any claims that we have the capacity to process 18,000 migrants a day right now are naively optimistic. It is going to take creative and systemic change to holistically help the border situation.