Asylum-seeking families currently staying at the northern Mexican border towns have sent their kids unaccompanied to cross the international bridges into South Texas. Most do not know that it may take months or even years for them to see each other again.
Following the new rule enforced on all asylum seekers to have scheduled interviews with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers via the CBP One app, many kids have been seen crossing the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge and the Gateway International Bridge in Brownsville alone, the non-profit Lawyers for Good Government informed Border Report.
A supervising attorney from Lawyers for Good Government, Priscilla Orta, shared that kids of migrant parents are not allowed to cross and attend the scheduled asylum interviews with their parents. As a result, parents need to make "difficult decisions" on whether to send their kids alone in the United States or leave them behind as they cross without them. Some families opted for the former out of desperation.
"Last Monday, they started coming to the bridge, expecting, as usual, to be let in. They were not and there in the moment, families were forced to decide. Some people are having the kids cross before or after them as unaccompanied minors, and some folks are leaving them behind with aunts or uncles mistakenly believing that aunts or uncles could cross the children," Orta stated.
Most asylum-seeking families do not understand the risks
However, some of these families do not understand that children cannot cross with their aunts or uncles, as these kids will still be considered unaccompanied minors when they arrive.
Unfortunately, a lot do not understand the "intricacies of U.S. immigration law," especially since they have no access to an attorney, Concho Valley reported. Their goal is to be let in so they can process their cases, yet it is not as simple as they thought it would be.
Unaccompanied children arriving in the United States are placed in the care of the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement.
Orta further explained that most parents thought they would have their children back within 24 hours once they crossed the border, yet that is not how the process works. Due to background checks, families must wait for at least weeks, months, or sometimes years before reuniting. It will all depend upon the family's circumstances. There is also the possibility of the parents taking years to cross the border legally.
Number of unaccompanied minors in borders is at an all-time high
According to the U.S. Department of Human Services, which manages the Office of Refugee Resettlement, there were 306 unaccompanied minors placed under the custody of CBP as of Wednesday, and the figures do not include Mexican nationals yet. CBP has a reported 405 children under its care.
County Supervisor Johnathan Lines called the current incident "tragic," with 36,000 children crossing the border from Mexico into the U.S. alone in Yuma County, Arizona, last November. And these are kids as young as five years old.
Last year, nearly 150,000 unaccompanied minors were near or at the U.S.-Mexico border, as shared by the non-profit think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
The figures are said to be at an all-time high despite temporarily slowing down in October, Border Report.
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