New York Times
By Julia Preston
April 10, 2014
Border
Patrol agents in olive uniforms stood in broad daylight on the banks of
the Rio Grande, while on the Mexican side smugglers pulled up in vans
and unloaded illegal
migrants.
The
agents were clearly visible on that recent afternoon, but the migrants
were undeterred. Mainly women and children, 45 in all, they crossed the
narrow river on the
smugglers’ rafts, scrambled up the bluff and turned themselves in,
signaling a growing challenge for the immigration authorities.
After
six years of steep declines across the Southwest, illegal crossings
have soared in South Texas while remaining low elsewhere. The Border
Patrol made more than 90,700
apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley in the past six months, a 69
percent increase over last year.
The
migrants are no longer primarily Mexican laborers. Instead they are
Central Americans, including many families with small children and
youngsters without their parents,
who risk a danger-filled journey across Mexico. Driven out by deepening
poverty but also by rampant gang violence, increasing numbers of
migrants caught here seek asylum, setting off lengthy legal procedures
to determine whether they qualify.
The
new migrant flow, largely from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, is
straining resources and confounding Obama administration security
strategies that work effectively
in other regions. It is further complicating President Obama’s uphill
push on immigration, fueling Republican arguments for more border
security before any overhaul.
With
detention facilities, asylum offices and immigration courts
overwhelmed, enough migrants have been released temporarily in the
United States that back home in Central
America people have heard that those who make it to American soil have a
good chance of staying.
“Word
has gotten out that we’re giving people permission and walking them out
the door,” said Chris Cabrera, a Border Patrol agent who is vice
president of the local of
the National Border Patrol Council, the agents’ union. “So they’re
coming across in droves.”
In
Mexican border cities like Reynosa, just across the river, migrants
have become easy prey for Mexican drug cartels that have seized control
of the human smuggling business,
heightening perils for illegal crossers and security risks for the
United States.
At
the Rio Grande that afternoon, the smugglers calculatedly sent the
migrants across at a point where the water is too shallow for Border
Patrol boats that might have
turned them back safely at the midriver boundary between the United
States and Mexico.
A
Border Patrol chief, Raul Ortiz, watched in frustration from a
helicopter overhead. “Somebody probably told them they’re going to get
released,” he said. As agents booked
them, the migrants waited quietly: a Guatemalan mother carrying a
toddler with a baby bottle, another with an infant wrapped in blankets.
A
9-year-old girl said she was traveling by herself, hoping to rejoin her
mother and two brothers in Louisiana. But she did not know where in
Louisiana they were. After
a two-week journey from Honduras, her only connection to them was one
telephone number on a scrap of paper.
A
Honduran woman said the group had followed the instructions of the
Mexican smugglers. “They just told us to cross and start walking,” she
said.
Other
migrants were trying to elude the Border Patrol, and within the hour
Chief Ortiz saw his interdiction efforts working according to plan. A
short way upriver in deeper
water, agents radioed that they had turned back a raft with eight
“bodies.”
Moments
later a surveillance blimp cruising nearby detected people lying under
dense brush. As the helicopter swooped low, the pilot spotted sneakers
at the base of the
trees. Agents on the ground flushed out nine migrants, all men.
“Technology, air operations, ground units, that’s the complete package,” Chief Ortiz said.
The
new migrants head for South Texas because it is the shortest distance
from Central America. Many young people ride across Mexico on top of
freight trains, jumping
off in Reynosa.
The
Rio Grande twists and winds, and those who make it across can quickly
hide in sugar cane fields and orchards. In many places it is a short
sprint to shopping malls
and suburban streets where smugglers pick up migrants to continue
north.
Border
Patrol officials said apprehensions were higher partly because they
were catching many more of the illegal crossers. About 3,000 agents in
the Rio Grande Valley
— 495 new this year — patrol in helicopters and boats, on all-terrain
vehicles and horseback. Drones and aerostat blimps are watching from the
sky. Under a new strategy, border agencies are working with federal
drug agents, the F.B.I. and Texas police to break
up Mexican smuggling organizations by prosecuting operatives on this
side of the border.
But
whereas Mexicans can be swiftly returned by the Border Patrol, migrants
from noncontiguous countries must be formally deported and flown home
by other agencies. Even
though federal flights are leaving South Texas every day, Central
Americans are often detained longer.
Women
with children are detained separately. But because the nearest facility
for “family units” is in Pennsylvania, families apprehended in the Rio
Grande Valley are
likely to be released while their cases proceed, a senior deportations
official said.
Minors
without parents are turned over to the Department of Health and Human
Services, which holds them in shelters that provide medical care and
schooling and tries to
send them to relatives in the United States. The authorities here are
expecting 35,000 unaccompanied minors this year, triple the number two
years ago.
Under
asylum law, border agents are required to ask migrants if they are
afraid of returning to their countries. If the answer is yes, migrants
must be detained until
an immigration officer interviews them to determine if the fear is
credible. If the officer concludes it is, the migrant can petition for
asylum. An immigration judge will decide whether there is a
“well-founded fear of persecution” based on race, religion,
nationality, political opinion or “membership in a particular social
group.”
Immigration
officials said they had set the bar intentionally low for the initial
“credible fear” test, to avoid turning away a foreigner in danger. In
2013, 85 percent
of fear claims were found to be credible, according to federal figures.
As more Central Americans have come, fear claims have spiked, more than doubling in 2013 to 36,026 from 13,931 in 2012.
The
chances have not improved much to win asylum in the end, however. In
2012, immigration courts approved 34 percent of asylum petitions from
migrants facing deportation
— 2,888 cases nationwide. Many Central Americans say they are fleeing
extortion or forced recruitment by criminal gangs. But immigration
courts have rarely recognized those threats as grounds for asylum.
Yet
because of immense backlogs in the courts — with the average wait for a
hearing currently at about 19 months — claiming fear of return has
allowed some Central Americans
to prolong their time in the United States.
At
the big immigration detention center at Port Isabel, which serves much
of the Rio Grande Valley, half of about 1,100 detainees at any given
time are asylum seekers,
officials said. With the asylum system already stretched, the nearest
officers are in Houston, doing interviews by video conference. In 2013,
the closest immigration court, in Harlingen, was swamped with new cases,
becoming even more backlogged.
Detention
beds fill up, and migrants deemed to present no security risk are
released under supervision, officials said, with their next court
hearing often more than a
year away.
At
their now teeming front-line stations along the river, Border Patrol
officials readily admit they are not set up to hold migrants for long.
Agents and migrants alike
refer to the cells there as “hieleras” — freezers.
In
cinder-block rooms with concrete benches and a toilet in the corner,
there are no chairs, beds, showers or hot food. On a recent day,
migrants caked in river mud were
packed shoulder to shoulder, many on the floor, trying to warm up in
space blankets the Border Patrol provides. Some held their fingers to
their lips to signal hunger.
But
agents said they have accelerated their work so more migrants are
deported directly from Border Patrol stations in as little as two days.
Officials said few migrants
— only 4 percent — claim fear of returning when they are with the
Border Patrol.
Rather,
migrants are claiming fear after they are sent to longer-term detention
centers like Port Isabel, leading officials to suspect they have been
coached by other
detainees.
But
lawyers for asylum seekers said migrants frequently report that Border
Patrol agents never asked them about their concerns, or that they were
too exhausted or intimidated
to express them in the hours after being caught.
“A
lot of times these people had very real, legitimate fears,” said Kimi
Jackson, director of the South Texas Pro Bono Asylum Representation
Project, known as ProBAR.
“But it seems to them they were not asked the questions by the Border
Patrol in the type of situation where they could talk freely.”
Lawyers
said officials had started to make it far harder for migrants to win
release by requiring many more to post bond, with rates rising to as
high as $10,000.
That
news had not reached migrants at a shelter run by nuns in Reynosa.
Several said they were heading to the United States to seek “asilo.”
They could say truthfully
they were afraid to go home.
Luis
Fernando Herrera Perdomo, 19, said he fled Honduras after gang members
shot and killed a brother who was sleeping in the bed next to his.
A
29-year-old former soldier from El Salvador, who asked to be identified
only as Jesús, said he left his wife and three children to escape a
gang that came gunning for
him because he arrested some of its members while in the army.
In
Reynosa, the dangers had only multiplied. José Rubén Hernández, 32,
said he had been kidnapped for two weeks while Mexican smugglers
extorted $10,000 in ransom from
his frantic family in Honduras.
“We are a gold mine for the cartels,” he said.
Other
migrants had been imprisoned in a smugglers’ stash house until Mexican
military troops stormed it to free them. Two Hondurans who had just
arrived at the shelter
displayed new bruises, saying they had been beaten that morning in a
rail yard by smugglers associated with the Zetas, a brutal Mexican
cartel.
But
the migrants still intended to hire new smugglers and try to cross.
“I’m still alive and I have faith in God, so I will try to make it over
to the other side,” Mr.
Herrera said.
Chief Ortiz said agents were speeding deportations to change the message reaching Central America.
“It
cost the migrant an awful lot of money and time and effort to get
here,” he said. “If I send somebody back to Guatemala or Honduras,
chances are they’re going to sit
there and say, ‘You know what, I don’t think I’m going to try this
again.’ ”
“The word may get out,” he said.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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