On April 29, a group of 50 people — most of them families from Honduras and El Salvador — attempted to enter the United States at the port of entry in San Ysidro, across the US-Mexico border from Tijuana. They’re the first delegation from a “caravan” of about 300 Central Americans that has traveled through Mexico over the past few weeks on the way to the United States, organized by the humanitarian nonprofit Pueblos sin Fronteras.
The caravan members were initially prevented from entering the US because Customs and Border Protection agents told them they didn’t have the capacity to process them. As of May 1st, about a dozen have been allowed through; the rest are still waiting in Tijuana.
None of this is all that unusual. People, most of them Central Americans, present themselves for asylum to border agents every day. It’s perfectly legal for someone without papers to go to a US port of entry and seek asylum by showing they meet the legal definition: that they would be the victims of persecution based on their race, nationality, religion, political views, or membership in a targeted social group if returned to their home country.
But during the caravan’s journey through Mexico, it attracted the attention of the American media and President Trump. To border hawks, it’s become a symbol of the fear that Central Americans are fraudulently sneaking into the United States by applying for asylum and then disappearing into American communities once they’re released from detention. To the administration, it’s been a catalyst for a new crackdown on families seeking asylum — while the administration hasn’t publicized letting in any of the caravan members at San Ysidro, it has publicized filing federal charges for illegal entry against 11 Central Americans who entered the US between ports of entry over the weekend, who the administration claims were part of the caravan.
To human rights advocates, it’s become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: The fear of harsh treatment that motivated caravan members to band together for safety has attracted even harsher treatment, which will likely continue for future asylum seekers even after this caravan has passed through.
The caravan is a planned, annual journey to protect Central American asylum seekers traveling through Mexico to the US
For several years now, Central Americans have made up the biggest share of people crossing the US’s southern border, often to seek asylum from gang violence in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
To draw attention to the plight of Central American asylum seekers, and using the logic that there’s more safety in a large group of migrants traveling out in the open that smaller groups traveling through the shadows, the nonprofit Pueblos Sin Fronteras has organized annual migrant caravans through Mexico to the United States.
Central American asylum seekers have to get through Mexico first. The weeks-long journey is often dangerous — migrants are subjected to extortion, rape, and sometimes other violence by smugglers (or by Mexicans who lie in wait for migrants to come their way). And their odds of making it all the way aren’t good.
Since 2014, the Mexican government has been cracking down on people traveling through to the United States, partly as a way to retain the goodwill of the US government. The crackdown has resulted in the detention and deportation of about 950,000 Central Americans, as well as the detention of many indigenous Mexican citizens living in southern Mexican states like Chiapas, and, according to a 2015 United Nations report, widespread torture. (A Guardian article about the UN report says that “methods used include beatings, electric shocks, suffocation, waterboarding, forced nudity” — and, notably, rape.)
The Mexican government tends to react to the annual caravans by cracking down on migrants who come through after it. For this reason, the caravan is controversial even among migration advocates in the region; some of them believe the media attention generated from one high-profile caravan through Mexico isn’t worth the heightened risks borne by subsequent migrants.
The Mexican government cracked down on the caravan — but some people decided to continue through to the US
While the Mexican government has noticed and reacted to previous years’ caravans, though, the American press and the American government really haven’t.
Until 2018’s caravan.
There are probably three reasons the caravan attracted so much US attention this year. For one thing, at its peak, it was bigger than previous years’ groups — numbering an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 people when it crossed into Mexico from Guatemala. For another, BuzzFeed’s Adolfo Flores was embedded with the caravan and provided a steady stream of English-language coverage of it.
Finally, and most importantly, when the group crossed into Mexico, Mexican agents didn’t make an effort to stop them (at least partly due to the caravan’s sheer size).
As Flores reported:
When [a Mexican immigration effort] learned that the Central American migrants heading her way numbered more than 1,000, she took off for the restaurant across the street.
“I’m going to have a relaxing Coke,” she told BuzzFeed News.
That’s where the caravan started catching attention (and provoking alarm) from Fox News — and, shortly afterward, from President Trump himself.
Trump started tweeting angrily about the caravan, alternately attacking Mexico for not cracking down to stop it and imploring the Mexican government to do just that. Trump’s fixation with the caravan may have played a role in his decision to deploy National Guard troops to the US-Mexico border — despite the fact that apprehension levels overall are still way lower than they have been for most of recent history — and has renewed an effort from his administration to expand detention, family separation, and prosecution for asylum seekers presenting themselves at the border.
After a few days of Trump’s harangues, the Mexican government stepped in. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted on April 3:
I’ve been advised by Mexican officials that the caravan is dissipating. GOM has repatriated several hundred participants to Central America and is offering refugee status to others who qualify. I thank the GOM for their partnership on this and other security issues.
— Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen (@SecNielsen) April 3, 2018
The Mexican government’s intervention succeeded in persuading most of the caravan members not to continue north to the United States — or preventing them from trying. But some of the migrants decided to continue anyway.
People who have received humanitarian visas or permissions to remain in Mexico have been leaving since yesterday. A smaller version of the caravan, numbers unknown, with asylum seekers will continue on. pic.twitter.com/3CvW66O00C
— Adolfo Flores (@aflores) April 5, 2018
For many, this was always the plan: to present themselves to border agents and seek asylum, as hundreds of thousands of Central Americans have done in recent years. Pueblos sin Fronteras organizers announced that they’d try to enter the US at the San Ysidro port of entry, in the San Diego sector of the border, and present themselves for asylum there.
On Sunday, the remnants of the caravan arrived at San Ysidro. Organizers selected 50 of the “most vulnerable” travelers — people, mostly families, whose asylum claims were most sympathetic and legally viable. They attempted to present themselves to Customs and Border Protection agents at the line that marked the border itself.
They weren’t allowed to. CBP agents claimed that the San Ysidro facility was already full of asylum seekers whose cases were being processed, and didn’t have room for more. This happens routinely; asylum seekers are often forced to stay in Tijuana for days or longer while waiting to be processed. (There’s been some skepticism about whether the administration is telling the truth about being at capacity, but the San Ysidro facility really doesn’t have much space, so it’s plausible.)
The caravan group slept under the walkway to the port of entry building on Sunday night. On Monday, they waited to try again.
The group from the caravan has been waiting at the port of entry for nearly 15 hours to ask for asylum.
— Adolfo Flores (@aflores) April 30, 2018
“That’s okay I’ll wait,” said one woman seeking asylum as she held her baby. “Just give me the hope that I will be able to ask for asylum.”
Border agents can’t deny caravan members the chance to seek asylum — but the Trump administration seems to be signaling they’ll have a hard time getting it
Seeking asylum is perfectly legal under US and international law.
Just presenting yourself for asylum doesn’t mean you’ll get it, but someone who enters the US without papers isn’t violating the law if they present themselves at a port of entry — an airport, seaport, or road checkpoint — to seek asylum or another humanitarian status.
(If they enter outside of ports of entry and present themselves to Border Patrol, they’ve entered illegally, but they’re still seeking legal status, and the US is legally obligated to give them a chance to prove they qualify for it.)
Many border hawks think Central American migrants are taking advantage of the US asylum system — that they’re being coached in what to tell government officials at the border to show they have a “credible fear” of persecution, and that once released from federal custody, they will abscond into the US rather than showing up in court to pursue their asylum cases.
Accordingly, some Trump administration officials have tried to push an agenda to make it easier for the US to deny “credible fear” claims; deport Central American children who arrive unaccompanied and prosecute relatives living in the US who helped pay for them to come; separate families that arrive together, and prosecute asylum seeker parents.
The caravan — and, more importantly, Trump’s fixation with it — has given them the opportunity to move forward with this effort within the executive branch, and pressure Congress to close what they claim are the “loopholes” that allow people to stay in the US outside of detention while their asylum claims are pending.
As the remnants of the caravan proceeded northward, the Trump administration readied itself. Both the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security put out statements warning caravan members that illegal entry was a federal crime, and that the US would not tolerate false asylum claims.
The administration didn’t say outright that caravan members who presented themselves at the border would have their “credible fear” claims denied and be prevented from filing asylum applications. That would have been blatantly illegal. But the implication of the statements was that the caravan would face elevated scrutiny at best — and, at worst, that the Trump administration really had prejudged the caravan members.
If and when CBP agents allow the first group of caravan members to approach and seek asylum — or if the caravan delegation gets frustrated by the wait and decides to attempt to enter outside of ports of entry, and present themselves to Border Patrol agents instead (who have more capacity) — it’s not clear how many of them will successfully pass their “credible fear” screenings and be allowed to apply for asylum.
It’s not clear if the families will be separated, with children sent for placement to Health and Human Services — which has lost track of some 1,500 Central American children in recent years, allowing some of them to become victims of labor trafficking. If they attempt to enter outside of ports of entry, it’s not clear if parents (detained alone in adult immigration facilities) will be prosecuted in federal court for illegal entry, even though they’re seeking asylum. It’s not clear if they will be given the chance to post bail while their asylum cases are pending. It’s not clear, ultimately, how many of those asylum claims will prevail.
It wouldn’t be illegal for the administration to do any of these things, per se. But it raises the question of how seriously the administration is taking the caravan’s claims of persecution, and the right to seek asylum generally. And regardless of what happens to this caravan, future Central American asylum seekers, including families and children, are going to have a steep uphill climb to be allowed to stay in the United States.