SCOOP: The Mexican government has begun pushing back on a controversial Trump administration program forcing asylum-seekers to return to the country after more than 35,000 people were sent back to Mexico, BuzzFeed News has learned.
Mexican officials have scuttled some of the plans by implementing caps on the number of people that can be returned to the country, limiting hours when they can be sent back, and refusing to take asylum-seekers on Sundays, according to a DHS briefing doc I obtained.
The move comes after more than 35,000 people were returned under the program since its inception at the beginning of the year, according to the document. The figure — the highest to date — has not been previously reported.
In El Paso, Mexican officials are no longer accepting asylum-seekers after 1 p.m. The decision has forced US Customs and Border Protection to detain immigrants who come from Mexico for their US court hearings in their custody overnight in more than half of all cases this month.
In some instances, the Mexican government has outright refused to take those who have been given final deportation orders but can appeal their cases, much to the chagrin of DHS officials.
The Mexican government has also begun bussing asylum-seekers returned to the country’s northern border to far-off locations such as Monterrey or Tapachula, a move that has puzzled DHS officials, according to the briefing document.
The effort, officials said, was poorly coordinated, and while it appeared it was designed to relieve overcrowding at the border, it was still unknown to US officials what Mexico’s intentions are.
Scoop: The Biden administration is considering forcing some migrant families who enter the country without authorization to remain near the border in Texas while awaiting asylum screening, effectively limiting their ability to travel within the U.S.
The proposal, which recalls President Reagan’s efforts to limit asylum-seekers’ movements in the late 1980s, is likely to draw fierce opposition from immigrant rights groups and border-state officials.
In the late 1980s, the Reagan administration forced thousands of migrants to apply for asylum near where they crossed in south Texas, and receive their decision there as well.
Officials were clear at the time that the policy was intended to deter families from crossing.
The charge - 1459 - was conceived decades ago to fight drug trafficking, and it carries a maximum sentence of one year, double the length of the more well-known charge of illegal entry, which carries a top-end sentence of six months.
More than 60% of those charged under the failure to report law were from Muslim-majority countries, including Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Mali, according to a Times analysis of hundreds of federal court records.
One of the men we spoke with told us his brother had already been deported from the US after fleeing the draft.
In Russia, his brother hides inside, unwilling to venture onto public streets, fearful that he will be captured and sent to the front if Russian authorities find him.
One man refused to get on his deportation flight.
The other fainted at the airport.
“I am now considered a deserter,” one of them said, adding he has heard rumors of deportees being “disappeared” — falling into the hands of Russian authorities, lost to their families.
--medical personnel "failed to document numerous medical encounters, emergency antipyretic interventions, and administrations of medicine"
--BP staff were not aware she had sickle cell anemia, per CBP
On 5/17, the nurse practitioner "reported checking the girl’s heart rate and blood oxygen saturation with a pulse oximeter during each visit with normal findings, and administering Ondansetron (Zofran) for nausea at 9:33 a.m."
The policy operates "just as the Trump administration’s prior asylum bans did: Asylum seekers subject to the Rule—all non-Mexicans—are categorically barred unless they satisfy one of the enumerated and limited conditions or exceptions."
"That’s a simple ban with narrow exemptions, and it turns the asylum process on its head," the suit continues.
BREAKING: A federal court judge in Florida has BLOCKED the Biden administration from releasing migrants from Border Patrol custody without court notices under a memo signed this week.
The block is in effect tonight and will last for 2 weeks.
Expect the Biden admin to appeal.
The Biden administration declared in court earlier today that without the release policy and other measures there could be 45,000 migrants in custody by the end of the month.
As of Wednesday, there were more than 28,000 in custody - already way over.
"this problem is largely one of Defendants’ own making through the adoption an implementation of policies that have encouraged the so-called “irregular migration” that has become fairly regular over the past 2 years," the judge countered.