Fonte: Carrizo Springs Border Patrol, CBP Office of Air and Marine Rescue Undocumented Immigrants
At the end of March 2021, the number of immigrants at the border began to increase and the United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) began to release immigrants with the “Notice to Report”. Thus, immigrants would have up to 60 days to go to the Immigration and Customs Office (ICE) and apply for asylum.
This process began to present several problems, mainly because the immigrants did not show up at the offices and the process was not progressing. So, from July 2021, a new program was implemented. In this new format, immigrants could enter the country, however, they should wear an anklet to identify their whereabouts. Since then, more than 800,000 immigrants have been released through these programs.
However, only 214,000 of them were given dates to appear in court for their trial, where they could be granted asylum. So this means that almost 600,000 immigrants still have not received any notice to appear in court and have no information about when and where they should appear to apply for asylum.
Many immigrants are lost, unable to work legally in the country and, moreover, the deadline for applying for asylum is one year and many of them have already missed the deadline without even being aware of it.
As reported by NBC News, the first few times border agents started releasing immigrants without court dates was right at the beginning of the program, in March 2021.
Thus, this became the first major immigration-related challenge in the Biden administration. Since then, there has been a lot of attention and various criticisms of the government regarding the crossing of the southern border of the United States, but little has been said about the lack of attention given to immigrants after entering the country.
Immigration lawyer and president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, Jeremy McKinney, said that this ends up further confusing a population that is fleeing persecution and torture in their countries. Furthermore, he stated that an immigrant may have difficulties keeping the Immigration and Customs agency informed if he moves during the asylum application process.
Another problem is the lack of funding for the program. According to data from NBC News, in a period of 10 days in January 2023, more than 25 thousand immigrants were withdrawn from the program, representing a drop of 7% in the total number. Of those, only 2,300 had their final hearings to decide on asylum.
Despite the program costing less than US$1 per immigrant per day and therefore being much cheaper than keeping them in detention, the number of crossings continues to increase, causing the costs of the program to increase exponentially. Currently, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency spends US$100 million to operate the program.
