IMMIGRATION-USA/BORDER – REUTERS Agency
By Ted Heson
WASHINGTON, April 8 (Reuters) – The U.S. government will begin testing faster reviews of the asylum process for immigrants caught crossing the border into Mexico illegally next week, the Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday, as part of preparations for the end of border restrictions due to COVID-19 in May.
US asylum officials will conduct initial reviews of asylum claims for a small number of migrants in the coming days while they remain in the custody of border authorities, Homeland Security spokeswoman Marsha Espinosa said. Interviews will be conducted over the phone and immigrants will have access to legal assistance during the interviews.
US President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has implemented new border restrictions in recent months as he deals with a record number of migrants caught crossing illegally.
Former Republican President Donald Trump also used expedited asylum reviews to expedite the resolution of cases, but those reviews were conducted by US Customs and Border Protection personnel and without the guarantee of legal representation.
Since March 2020, US authorities have been able to expeditiously remove migrants caught crossing the border illegally back to Mexico under an order known as Title 42, enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic. The order expires on May 11 along with the public health emergency, and the Biden administration is preparing for a possible increase in border crossings.
The experiment in speeding up asylum checks “will serve as the basis for best practices” if the government decides to apply it more widely in the future, Espinosa said. The spokeswoman did not want to specify in which part of the border it would be applied next week.
Reuters initially reported in December that Biden officials were weighing whether to use expedited asylum checks among other Trump administration-style restrictions.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing in Spanish by Ricardo Figueroa)
Source: Ambito
