A 98% drop in arrivals of Venezuelans to the southern border of the United States has helped lead to a sharp decline in the number of migrants crossing illegally from Mexico after asylum restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic expired last week, US officials said Wednesday.
Border Patrol has apprehended migrants an average of 4,400 times a day since Friday, when a public health rule known as Title 42 ended. The average includes fewer than 4,000 migrants on each of the last two days, according to Blas Nuñez-Neto, acting assistant secretary for Border Policy and Immigration at the Department of Homeland Security. That’s less than the daily average of more than 10,000 that was recorded in the four days before the expiration of the Title 42.
“We continue to see encouraging signs that the measures we have put in place are working,” Nuñez-Neto told reporters, adding that “It’s still too early to draw any conclusions about where these trends will go in the days and weeks ahead.”
The US government has been promoting a strategy of incincentives and threats that combines new legal routes to enter the United States with consequences for those who do not use them.
In the days before the end of the Title 42Border Patrol apprehended 2,400 Venezuelans a day, followed by 1,900 Mexicans and 1,400 Colombians, Núñez-Neto said. After Title 42 expired, Mexicans replaced Venezuelans as the top nationality with 1,000 citizens a day, followed by 510 Colombians and 570 Guatemalans. The number of Venezuelans fell to 50.
There is “several promising signs” That the migration through Panama’s dangerous Darién region is declining, Nuñez-Neto said.
The migration from Venezuela also fell in October after Mexico began receiving people from the South American nation who were expelled from the United States under the Title 42, which denied asylum on the basis of preventing the spread of COVID-19. However, the Venezuelans began to arrive again in large numbers just before the expiration of the Title 42walking for days through Panama.
The United States has been sending “thousands” of Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans back to Mexico under a new policy.which went into effect Friday and which denies asylum to anyone who travels through another country, such as Mexico, to cross the border into the United States illegally, with few exceptions, Nuñez-Neto said.
The new legal routes include allowing entry of up to 30,000 VenezuelansCubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans to the United States every month, this is if they submit an application on the internet and have a financial sponsor and arrive in the nation by plane. The United States has also been admitting 1,000 people a day at land border crossings with Mexico if they request it in northern Mexico. through an application for mobile devices called CBPOne. Nuñez-Neto said the number allowed on the app will increase soon, but he did not say when or by how much.
So far, President Joe Biden’s warnings that the border will be “chaotic for a while” they have not developed as some thought, with numbers one-third high-level government estimates.
Border Patrol had more than 28,000 people in custody last week, doubling in two weeks and leading the agency to release thousands without notices to appear in immigration court. Instead, they were sent notifications to appear at an immigration office within 60 days, dramatically reducing processing time and allowing officers to free up space in the detention facility.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Florida expanded his order, first issued last week, to prohibit quick releases. Nuñez-Neto reiterated on Wednesday the government’s disagreement with the court order, although he acknowledged that the lower number of crossings has eased custody conditions. On Sunday, Border Patrol had 22,259 people in custody, down 23% from four days earlier.
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