Hundreds of migrants protest in support of the Biden administration

Hundreds of migrants marched in Tijuana on Friday in a rare protest in support of the Joe Biden administration's decision to use a mobile app as a tool for migrants to apply for asylum.

It's been a month since Sergio, an asylum seeker from the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, has used the CBP One app, but it's only been a week since he arrived in Tijuana.

“What happens is that I have relatives and some acquaintances who have already gone to the United States using the application and it is not convenient for us that they are going to suspend it,” Sergio told La Opinión as he marched towards the Mexican consulate in the United States.

Sergio explained that the threats that caused his brothers and his mother to flee, now in California, were for his entire family; He, his wife, and their children are the last remaining family members in Guerrero.

Like Sergio's relatives, some 900 migrants from the Ágape Misión Mundial shelter have managed to cross the border to continue their journey in the United States. asylum process, said the director of that refuge, Albert Rivera, who called for the march and a protest in front of the US consulate.

“We protest because the CBP One application has served us very well so that migrants seeking asylum can enter the United States, but now the state of Texas has already filed a lawsuit not to use the application, and we believe that if stop using it, it's going to be chaos,” Rivera said.

But, so this is a protest in favor of the Biden administration continuing to use CBP One, is that right? the pastor was asked.

“We could say yes, indeed,” he replied.

Dozens of migrants carried banners they made out of brightly colored cardboard before marching through the Otay area of ​​Tijuana toward the consulate.

“No to coyotes, yes to CBP One,” read one ; “If they remove CBP One, they will encourage corruption,” said another.

Tijuana municipal police prevented the march from reaching the consulate, but the migrants gathered on the way to those offices, while Rivera gave an impromptu press conference.

“With the application, with CBP One, the coyotes can no longer take people's money, or leave them in the desert or mountains to die, because the same migrants, each one, make their request for an interview – before an immigration officer – and present the evidence of the matter for which you are seeking asylum,” Rivera said.

“What will happen if they remove the application is that people will get desperate, want to jump over the wall and go there will be more deaths when jumping over it or in the deserts, more kidnappings, more rapes of women,” he warned.

A migrant from Honduras who preferred to withhold her name said that “if we don't have that application, and if we don't have any other alternative, maybe I would try, I don't know, maybe cross the border to turn myself in to the border patrol, but I understand that this way you can no longer request asylum, that is why we are desperate.”

According to the pastor of Puerto Rican origin who grew up in Los Angeles, the absence of this application “will end up promoting undocumented migration , exactly what the state of Texas says it wants to prevent by suing to have the app removed.”

Texas Lawsuit
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton,filed a lawsuit Tuesday of this week against President Biden's administration for its use of the CBP One app to process asylum claims.

“The Biden administration deliberately crafted this phone app with the goal of illegally approving more foreign nationals into the country and having them go where they please once they arrive,” District Attorney Paxton said in a statement.

The Department of Security (DHS) responded to Paxton that it was precisely the use of the application that mainly helped reduce undocumented immigration by up to 70 percent after the end of Title 42 on May 11.

Both Pastor Rivera and DHS agree that suspending use of the app can create a mess.

“Without the application we are going to return to what we had before, camps of people who wait their turn to see when, for years, people who prefer to jump over the wall, suffer accidents, have coyotes rob and kidnap, it could be a real disaster,” Rivera said.