CIUDAD HIDALGO, Mexico — This week, Yuri Carolina Meléndez, a Venezuelan migrant, set foot on Mexican soil and promptly downloaded the U.S. government’s app to schedule her asylum appointments.
The CBP One app has been in existence for a while, but starting from Friday, migrants in the southernmost states of Mexico bordering Guatemala will have the ability to apply for appointments. This is a shift from the previous requirement of being in central or northern Mexico.
“I’m waiting to see if it’s effective,” Meléndez commented, taking a break under a tree with her two teenage daughters on a border highway leading to Tapachula.
Mexico has been urging the U.S. to extend the app’s reach to the south to alleviate the pressure migrants feel to journey north to Mexico City at least. The Mexican government has been attempting to keep migrants in the south, further from the U.S. border, but the scarcity of job opportunities and housing in southern cities like Tapachula has driven migrants north.
Mexico is hopeful that if migrants can wait for their appointments in the south, they might avoid the risk of being caught by authorities without papers or falling prey to organized crime groups that target migrants traveling north. With an appointment, they could theoretically move without hindrance.
Germin Alemán, a 31-year-old Honduran traveling with his wife and three children, intends to register as soon as they reach Tapachula. “We’re going to apply here, we’re going to wait for the appointment,” he stated as they journeyed from the border towards Tapachula.
However, others still feel the need to get further north. Many migrants often have large debts and need to start repaying them as soon as possible. Meléndez, for example, said she planned to keep moving to increase her chances of finding work.
CBP One has been a significant tool in U.S. efforts to manage the increasing demand for U.S. asylum along its southwestern border.
In the 2023 fiscal year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported over 2.4 million encounters with migrants along the U.S. Southwest border.
Since the app’s launch in January 2023, over 765,000 people have scheduled appointments to request asylum. Immigration has become a pivotal issue in the U.S. presidential election.
When the Biden administration temporarily halted the asylum process for those who crossed illegally in June, the app became one of the only ways to request asylum. The U.S. handles 1,500 appointments daily.
The number of migrants crossing the U.S. border illegally has significantly decreased since peaking in December 2023. Washington attributes much of this decline to Mexico’s enforcement efforts, which include capturing migrants in the north and sending them back south.
Nevertheless, Mexico welcomes the expansion of CBP One.
“This is going to be very beneficial for us,” Foreign Affairs Secretary Alicia Bárcena stated earlier this month when she announced the expansion. Immigration is a crucial issue in the relationship between the two countries.
However, for many nongovernmental groups advocating for migrants and human rights, there is little to celebrate.
In an open letter to the Mexican government on Thursday, they labeled CBP One “a violation of international law” because it allows the U.S. to restrict access to its territory for people in need of protection.
The groups argued that many migrants end up stuck in Mexico for months, waiting in overcrowded shelters or camping in unsanitary conditions. They are vulnerable to kidnapping, sexual assaults, torture, and extortion by criminals and authorities while they wait.
In theory, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute allows migrants with CBP One appointments to travel freely to the U.S. border, but the organizations claimed that authorities still occasionally detain migrants and send them back south to keep them away from the border.
The institute did not respond to a request for comment about these allegations.
In southern Mexico, migrants have always been targets of smugglers and criminals, but the region was relatively peaceful for the rest of its inhabitants. Now, the situation has changed. The southern border region is embroiled in a territorial conflict between Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, which want to control routes for smuggling drugs, weapons, and migrants. Violence has become a part of daily life in many border towns.
Among migrants waiting in Ciudad Hidalgo’s central plaza near the Suchiate River that divides Mexico and Guatemala, the question remains whether to wait or to keep moving north.
As a group of migrants debated the answer, the factor that weighed most heavily was money. The migrants had heard that the chances of finding jobs are higher in central and northern Mexico, and money is needed for what could be a monthslong wait for an appointment.
The United Nations Refugee Agency is cautious about the expansion of CBP One.
Giovanni Lepri, the Mexico chief for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said it could mean fewer risks for migrants headed north. But he added that dealing with migration requires diverse measures, ”those like stabilizing the countries of origin, protection in the transit countries and options for regularization and asylum in destination countries.”
For Noemí Ramírez, a 47-year-old from El Salvador, hearing that she could begin her asylum application from Mexico’s Chiapas state led her to immediately set off with her 19-year-old daughter for Tapachula.
“We’re going to wait until we get an appointment. I’m not thinking of going any farther,” she said as they walked, worrying about the violence they could face along the way. “I’m not going to risk it with my daughter. We’re alone.”
Agreed with the decision to broaden the region in Mexico for border asylum applications.
I disagree with this decision as it limits access to asylum for those in need.