US asylum restriction aimed at limiting claims has little impact given strained border budget

TUCSON, Ariz. — In giant white tents housing about 1,000 migrants near Tucson International Airport, Border Patrol agents demonstrate the clockwork’s efficiency in releasing detainees within two days of arrest with orders to appear before immigration courts at their final destination. Officers pass information from the field to colleagues preparing the cases, while migrants are bused for hours to a processing center, minimizing time in custody.

Notably, the operations center in the busiest corridor for illegal crossings into the US lacks asylum officers who conduct initial screenings, which are intended to screen out weak claims that do not meet strictly prescribed grounds for seeking protection, such as race, religion and political opinion.

Asylum officials were ordered nearly a year ago to apply a higher screening standard to those who cross the border illegally after passing through another country, such as Mexico, but they are understaffed to make much impact. The Biden administration welcomes the higher standard as a cornerstone of its border policy on legal challenges, but its application to only a small percentage of arrests shows how budgets can fail to match ambitions.

Budgets remain under pressure as the White House again considers sweeping measures to limit asylum at the border.

The failure of a $20 billion border security spending plan this month has led the administration to reassess its priorities. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, facing a $700 million gap this year, is considering reducing the number of detention beds from 38,000 to 22,000 and facilitating fewer deportation flights. These possible moves were first reported by The Washington Post and confirmed to The Associated Press by a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

Senate negotiators’ failed spending package would have provided $4 billion to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, including the addition of 4,338 asylum officers to screen asylum seekers and make final decisions on claims — more than four times current staffing levels.

Arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico fell 42% to the second-lowest monthly rate during Joe Biden’s presidency, a month after the higher standard replaced asylum restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic. The rule “is working as intended and has already significantly reduced the number of encounters at the border,” Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant secretary of homeland security for border and immigration policy, said in a court filing at the time.

Asylum seekers subjected to stricter screenings had a 59% success rate through September, up from 85% in the five years before the pandemic, Nuñez-Neto said in another lawsuit that called the policy a success.

While this suggests that the policy has made a difference, its scope is limited. Through September, agents interviewed only 57,700 migrants under the new rule, according to Nuñez-Neto. That represents only about 15% of the nearly 365,500 migrants released by Border Patrol from June to September with notices to appear in immigration court.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to provide more recent figures this week. It emphasizes that the higher screening standard is working as intended, but acknowledges that it has failed to keep pace with unprecedented migration flows and calls on Congress to adequately fund the efforts.

Asylum agents conducted more than 130,000 screenings, known as “credible fear interviews,” at the border during fiscal 2023, which was more than double the previous year. But during that time, more than 600,000 migrants were released with notices to appear in immigration court, and another 300,000 were ordered to report to an immigration agency for a court hearing, a practice that has largely been halted.

Mbala Giodi, a migrant from Angola, waited hours after crossing the border from Mexico in the mountains east of San Diego for agents to take him to a holding post, where he spent two days. He was released to a transit center in San Diego and told he would be given the opportunity to explain his reasons for fleeing his home country in southern Africa in court, with an initial hearing scheduled for May in New York.

“There weren’t many problems,” said 42-year-old Giodi, who calls himself a victim of government repression for being a student protester in Angola.

To even implement the higher screening standard, Citizenship and Immigration Services has added about 1,000 staff to help the existing roughly 850 asylum officers, training former asylum officers and other employees for short periods, said Michael Knowles, spokesman for the National Citizenship and Immigration. Services Council. The union represents workers at the agency, which also oversees work visas, green cards, citizenship applications and asylum claims originating across the border.

Assigning so many workers to borderline cases extended wait times for other services, he said. Overtime on weekends was mandatory, as was holiday work.

“We are so overwhelmed and there is so much pressure,” Knowles said. “Part of the border crisis is that they haven’t hired enough people from us to do the work.”

A lack of resources hampered another Biden policy that took effect in June 2022, allowing asylum officials to make final rulings on claims, not just screenings. It was intended to ease the workload of immigration judges, whose backlog of more than 3 million cases has allowed asylum seekers with weak claims to remain in the United States for years — entitled to work permits — while their cases wind through the system.

By the end of September, fewer than 6,000 asylum cases had been processed under the 2022 policy.

“That’s a very important program that received very little support,” Knowles said.

Advocates for asylum seekers have filed a lawsuit over the application of the higher screening standard. They argue it unfairly penalizes those who cross the border illegally, while a heavily oversubscribed online appointment system called CBP One is virtually the only way to get through an official port of entry. The standard will remain in effect as long as a judge’s ruling declaring the policy illegal is appealed. The case may reach the Supreme Court.

While migration flows fell immediately after the higher standard took effect, border apprehensions increased in five of the last six months of 2023 as migrants and smugglers adapted to the realities on the ground, peaking at an all-time high of 250,000 in December.