Trump Won’t Build a Shelter for Migrants Seeking Asylum in the Mexican Border

More than a thousand civilians, mostly composed of women and children, are sleeping near San Ysidro, California where the Mexican border lies.

The Migrants’ Surge

Ever since Trump ascended into office, the number of migrants arriving in the California-Mexico border surged for the past few months. However, the U.S. agency has no plans to increase the capacity of temporary shelters and facilities to accommodate the migrants.

While the past Obama administration built tent cities to process the Central American asylum requests, Trump’s Administration doesn’t want to accommodate them, considering the President himself wants to build a Wall to separate the two countries.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection issued a statement last Sunday stating that they’re bringing in more CBP officers to speed up the entry processing and documentation checking for migrants seeking asylum to the country

The CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan also said that since Customs cannot accommodate most of these migrants in their temporary house facilities, they may need to wait in the Mexican border before they’re granted admission. In line with this, a Republican aide revealed the “waiting game” was part of the President’s strategy for the American public to see how the immigrants try to exploit this loophole in the U.S. asylum system.

Currently, a migrant can seek asylum to the U.S. if there’s an imminent threat of persecution in their home country due to their nationality, race, religion, or membership for a particular social book, or for voicing their political opinion.

The Fall of Sheltered Cities

The United States noted a surge in border crossings between Spring 2014 up to Fall 2016. Since the U.S. Customs can’t handle the high volumes of migrants seeking asylum before, the Obama administration built temporary tents for migrants in Rio Grande Valley, and in Texas to handle the bottleneck and reduce their waiting times for filing the asylum claims. However, it all stopped when Trump assumed Presidency. In fact, he shot down one tent city in Donna, Texas, since he claims that the volume of border crossers there had diminished.

It’s All a Lie.

The critics, on the other hand, don’t believe the United States already reached the capacity to process asylum claims. They claimed it would never happen unless President Trump put a strain on it intentionally. In fact, a Salvadoran migrant named Juan Carlos Vásquez stated that the Trump administration is creating a gang that threatens to cut families into pieces. Meanwhile, several immigrant lawyers and advocates lamented the CBP for blocking these people who were fleeing from persecution and violence from their homeland.

Another Salvadoran Immigrant named Katarina Francisco cradled her 3-year old daughter named Allison and said she didn’t believe their lies. If anything, the U.S. simply didn’t want them for the sole reason that they’re foreigners. She’s also determined to wait as long as it takes

A US lawyer named Nicole Ramos, who accompanied Vasquez’s caravan, said that they simply cannot trust the law enforcement agency anymore. She said they weren’t credible any longer for giving the migrants such atrocious lies.

Meanwhile, Human Rights First observer Laura Gault suspected the border officials are attempting to keep the numbers low, resulting in a very long, tedious, drawn-out process to file asylum claims. She noted that these migrants already left their homes in Honduras and El Salvador for months to seek safety and solidarity. And now, they have to face uncertainty for their future as they wait for the US to grant them access.

Prioritizing America First

President Trump urges the Americans to stand up, fight for their freedom, and build the border wall

The surge of migrants crossing the border was answered with fury from Trump. He stated that these migrants are dangerous and a threat to the nation’s peace. Aside from limiting the capacity of tent cities and asylum claims, he also ordered the national guard troops to protect the border. Trump claims that their entry threatens to terrorize the United States by undercutting the American workers, draining the country’s resources. According to the President, they must be stopped at all costs.