Mexico to Escort Migrants with Asylum Appointments to U.S. Border

FAIR Take | September 2024

Over the weekend, Mexico announced it will provide escorted bus rides to migrants in southern Mexico who have CBP One appointments to claim asylum at a U.S. port of entry. Mexico’s immigration agency, the National Immigration Institute, said the buses will leave from the southern cities of Villahermosa and Tapachula. The migrants who use the buses to ride north will also receive a 20-day transit permit allowing them legal passage across Mexico. Local, state and federal law enforcement will provide security for the buses and meals will be provided during transit.

Until recently, migrants in the southernmost states of Mexico could not get CBP One appointments to claim asylum (or seek parole) at U.S. ports of entry because the Department of Homeland Security had limited the reach of the CBP One App to those in central Mexico. However, in early August, DHS announced it would, at Mexico’s request, extend the reach of the CBP One App to the Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco.

Map of Mexico

According to the Associated Press, Mexico is offering bus rides to migrants in an attempt to encourage them to stay in the southern states and not congregate in Mexico City or travel farther north. Migrants have complained that it is hard to get work in the south of Mexico and, in order to start paying off their debts to the cartels and traffickers, prefer to move north where they are more likely to get work. Other migrants have complained that, after they obtain CBP One appointments and head towards the U.S. border, they are intercepted by Mexican authorities who send them back south as part of the Mexican government’s new enforcement efforts.

The Biden Administration has hailed its negotiations with Mexico on immigration as a win for diplomacy. After an April phone call between President Biden and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leaders released a joint statement saying their countries would “work together to immediately implement concrete measures to significantly reduce irregular border crossings while protecting human rights.”

However, the extension of the CBP One app and the travel assistance provided to migrants are nothing more than a quid pro quo between the U.S. and Mexican governments that comes at the expense of Americans. Through the creation and expansion of the CBP One App, the Biden-Harris Administration is abusing our asylum system in order to help migrants – most of whom have no legitimate claim for asylum – to reach the U.S. border. If they arrive at a port of entry, they are released either on their own recognizance or parole, and allowed to remain in the U.S. for years, if not permanently.

Sound immigration policy, however, dictates that migrants outside the U.S. who are seeking protection from persecution claim asylum in the first safe country they reach.  Indeed, federal law expressly allows the U.S. government to deny asylum claims of aliens who have not sought protection in transit countries on their way to the U.S. (INA Section 208). Furthermore, if migrants in South or Central America want to seek protection in a third country (i.e. a country other than where they are physically present), they must avail themselves of the refugee system, which hears claims for protection and vets migrants outside of the United States. Encouraging the mass flow of migrants to the U.S. southern border is dangerous for the migrants, fuels human trafficking, enriches the cartels, and comes at the expense of Americans’ public safety, national security, and economic well-being.

In reality, Mexico’s offer to transport migrants north is tantamount to aiding and abetting one of the largest human trafficking schemes in modern history. The Biden-Harris Administration sent out the invitation to migrants world-wide through offers of asylum and parole, immediate release and work permits. Now, the Mexican government will escort the migrants north through the last 2,000 miles of the journey.