This month Danilo Zak takes over The Forum newsletter to share his
reflections from a recent visit to the U.S.-Mexico border.
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THE FORUM

DECEMBER 2021 EDITION

 

 

Hi John,

I'm Danilo Zak, Policy and Advocacy Manager at the National
Immigration Forum. This month I'm taking over The Forum newsletter to
share with you my **reflections**
from
a recent visit to the U.S.-Mexico border. I hope you enjoy traveling
alongside me!

**Forum staff and partners at the border. I'm the one on the far,
right-hand side.**In late September, after years of studying and working
on border policy, I was able to visit the border for the first time. In
El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Forum staff - along with partners from
across the country who lead our Bibles, Badges, and Business and Women
of Welcome initiatives - met with pastors running shelters for
vulnerable migrants on both sides of the border. We also met with the
local migration officials in Juárez, and with three seasoned Border
Patrol agents in a small park in El Paso.

We met with those who hear "**one million migrants expelled**
"
and can think only of individual, human stories - the woman who was
forced to send her child across alone, the family who had waited in
metering lines for months before the pandemic hit and the border
crossings closed down.

I wasn't under any illusion that a single visit to the border would
yield a comprehensive view of the situation, but I learned three
valuable lessons there that I would not have been able to sitting at my
desk in Washington.

**Border fence separating El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.**

**1. There is new ground here for compromise and innovation.**If you
listen to much of the politically charged media coverage of immigration,
the situation can feel entrenched, like the battle lines were drawn
years ago, the debate calcified by a string of almost-reforms that never
quite found a way to pass. But at the border itself, it felt to me as if
the opposite is true. The challenges - and the **potential solutions**

- are rapidly changing. There is new ground here for compromise and
for innovation.

Only a few years ago, the demographics of migrants arriving at the
border began to shift from being mostly single adults seeking economic
opportunity to include far more families and unaccompanied children
seeking asylum.

In Mexico, an official we spoke to at the local Chihuahua state migrant
reception agency (COESPO), said that when more and more families began
to arrive in 2019, no one was prepared. A pastor we met who runs a
migrant shelter in Juárez said that in a span of just months, he went
from housing 60 adult males to 280 mothers and children.

But a lot has changed in a short time. From a few uncoordinated shelters
in Juárez, COESPO now organizes reception and placement to a network of
more than 15 locations. Pastor Fierro is hard at work expanding his own
space, proudly showing us a new building next to the shelter with room
for more beds and a space to conduct language and employment assistance
classes. In El Paso, the same: An organized shelter network - led by
local faith leaders - has emerged and now works directly with CBP to
help process arriving asylum seekers on the U.S. side of the border.

There are new challenges at the border, and communities in El Paso and
Juárez are responding dynamically to create more orderly, more
welcoming spaces for vulnerable migrants.

**The outside of a Migrant shelter in Ciudad Juárez.**

** **

**2. We need more orderly, more secure, and more humane processes at the
border.**Despite this progress, another theme we heard again and again
was the urgent need for a more orderly, more humane process for those
seeking protection at the border.

For over a year, Mexican officials told us, the El Paso crossing points
have been closed to asylum seekers. There is no line to join. And for
those who do make it across, the use of a Trump-era rule called Title 42
has meant that most arriving migrants since March of 2020 have been
immediately forced back into Mexico without any chance to apply for
asylum. The expulsions happen rapidly, sometimes in the dead of night,
often after a "lateral flight" to a completely different part of the
border.

The policy seems designed to create chaos. It prevents asylum seekers
from accessing protection, but it also encourages attempts to cross from
those who are determined to enter without inspection. There are no
punishments for repeat crossings under the protocol, and as the Border
Patrol agents told us, the rapid nature of the expulsions means many try
to cross repeatedly in quick succession.

The whole thing plays right into the hands of the cartels. The going
rate for three trips is $12,000, one shelter organizer told us.

**3. It's time for a new approach.**As demographics change, the
infrastructure at our border - which was designed to treat asylum
seekers as exceptions - is increasingly out of date.

The Border Patrol agents we spoke to - each of whom have spent more
than a decade in the distinctive olive green - shared how when they
were trainees in a post-9/11 environment, the agency was all about
chasing down bad guys in the desert. Their mission was to stop
terrorists and hard drugs from crossing the border.

But now, they noted, much of their work is about rescuing asylum seekers
who have come to turn themselves in. These agents, trained to secure the
border against threats, now serve as the first line of welcome for
unaccompanied children fleeing violence. One spoke of a post he held
recently where he spent 10 hours a day in a chair processing asylum
claims.

I left the border more convinced of the need for a new approach: Can we
use trained personnel with childcare experience to help process asylum
seekers while CBP focuses on securing the border? Can we find a way to
open ports of entry to asylum seekers safely and securely? And can we
find a more orderly, more humane process to replace Title 42?

You can read my full reflection piece **here**
.

Thanks for reading,

Danilo Zak
Policy & Advocacy Manager

______________________________________________________________________

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