New statistics obtained by EL TIEMPO, The “express” deportation of thousands of Colombians arriving at the southern border of the United States.
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It is estimated that around 100 people are traveling on each of these flights, adding about 5,000 to the total in these three months.
But the trend is upwards. It went from 10 flights in March to 18 in April and more than 20 in this last month of May.
In fact, they sent a daily flight (excluding weekends) with people deported and/or deported in May, according to Cartwright.
To give some dimension to this figure, before March of this year, the average number of flights per month was once a month.
The “open deportation” of Colombians skyrocketed that month after Washington reached an agreement with the national government to accept their return without subjecting them to the regular processing and deportation process that exists in the United States.
The decision was largely made because of the large increase in the number of Colombians trying to enter the United States illegally or seeking asylum. To put it in context, around 10,000 Colombians were arrested at the border during 2021.
But in March this year, the arrests amounted to almost 16,000. In other words, there were more arrests in just one month than in the whole last year. So far this fiscal year, the numbers have reached more than 55,000 people, which is five times more than in the whole of 2021.
Possible thanks to express evacuations Controversial Title 42, a policy that began under the presidency of Donald Trump, but still valid. This gave authorities the authority to expel any person appearing at the border on allegations that the country has a health emergency caused by covid-19 and that immigrants could aggravate the situation by spreading the contagion.
Biden sought to lift the injunction starting this month, but a Louisiana judge blocked his decision while the case was pending in court.
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This means that for now, issuances through this policy will continue to be the daily bread. To clarify, the United States applies Title 42 to citizens of many nationalities and operates such flights to various countries around the world. Brazil, Ecuador and Haiti were some of the most visited destinations in the region.
As for the Venezuelans arriving en masse, the United States signed agreements with their countries of residence before arriving at the border, as they could not extradite them to Caracas.
But for citizens of Mexico or those with borders with this country and other Central Americans, the process is even more radical. “When it comes to the land border, they take the arrested person to the border line and leave it there, regardless of the presence of Mexican authorities,” says Wola security expert Adam Isacson.
The question many ask themselves is how this open deportation process of Colombians arriving at the border and detained works. This newspaper spoke to several experts on immigration issues, including Cartwright and Isacson, to try to understand the mechanism.
According to them, after the citizen is detained by the Border Patrol (CPB), he encounters two possible routes, mostly defined by the arresting officer.
The first is explicit exclusion through Title 42. The second is prosecution under Title 8. Title 8 is the mechanism normally used to prosecute detainees and this often includes assurances and guarantees that the emergency measure that gave life to Title 42 did not consider.
This route also includes a figure called “expedited deportation,” which is used to expedite migrants but takes into account other criteria and consequences.
How this border officer determines whether to deport a person using Title 42 or Title 8 remains a mystery. According to experts, this largely depends on how the meeting took place. If the person is caught while already in the US, that is, they entered illegally and not through the border crossing, they are usually a candidate for Title 42.
But if the migrant can state in English that what he is looking for is a mental institution and has proof that his life is in danger if he is sent back to his country, the type of documents he carries at the time of arrest is also valuable. country of origin. In turn, if they are a family nucleus or an adult traveling alone.
(You may be interested in: United States of America: What does Title 42 mean, deportation measure?)
Once the official decides that the person will go for Title 42, the process is quite dizzying. Most Colombians are detained in El Paso, Texas or Yuma, Arizona.
From there, they are transferred to the custody of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE), which takes them on side flights to Laredo, Texas, where they are loaded onto a plane to Bogota.
When it comes to the land border, the authorities take the arrested person to the border line and leave them there, whether they are present or not.
Adam Isacson, security expert at Wola.
Generally, this process takes no more than 3 to 5 days since the protocols in Title 42 determine that the person cannot be detained any longer.
During this time, and considering that the person will be deported, they have no access to lawyers, hearings before immigration judges, or NGOs for that matter.
But the process tends to be arbitrary, according to Cartwright. “If they are deporting about 2,000 people per month (in May), that means there are 10,000 or more who remain and are traded under Title 8. quickly or, in summary, through Title 8, but not at the same pace, and you probably have a better chance of getting your asylum case heard,” says this analyst.
So in practice, The US would only bring back 15 to 20 percent of all people who came to the border on these planes. and cannot be released in Mexico.
Therefore, according to Cartwright, Washington will use these flights to deter illegal immigration from countries in the region. If people knew there was a plane waiting to return them, they would probably think twice before embarking on the perilous journey through the “space”, this analyst said.
Some of these were seen in nationals of other nationalities, such as Brazilians and Ecuadorians, whose numbers began to dwindle and were said to be repatriated almost immediately.
The problem, according to Isacson, is that the procedure can become a kind of revolving door.
Since deportations through Title 42 have no legal consequences in the United States—as they are not expulsions and expulsions—the person can travel the day after they are repatriated. A common sight among those returning from the land border.
In fact, many try several times in the hope that they will go undetected in one of these or that their case will be forwarded to an asylum process through Title 8.
The complicated thing about Title 8 is that unlike Title 42, this mechanism has legal ramifications. If the person is denied entry either because of the abstraction mechanism or because their asylum application was rejected by an immigration judge, they will not be able to attempt to enter the United States for a period of 5 years.
Even if Thousands of immigrants continue to try their luck. This is because the chances of being “crowned” are still high. Since Biden became president, immigration authorities have detained more than 2.7 million immigrants. However, only 1.3 million of them returned through Title 42 (about 50 percent).
In the case of Colombians, the number of deportees is even lower (around 20 percent in May).
While most survivors are deported sooner or later, their chances of obtaining asylum are relatively high: 67 percent in 2021. The problem is that this procedure can take years. During the same period, the US processed only 55,000 cases among the millions it piled into the system.
During this time, immigrants may be arrested or monitored remotely, and in many cases may not have a work permit. This pushes them to an illegal life.
SERGIO GOMEZ MASERİ
Washington correspondent
TIME
On Twitter: @sergom68
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