New gatekeepers for asylum seekers

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: changing the asylum rules at the border.

Migrants seeking asylum at the U.S. southern border may soon have a decision in months rather than years.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: The Biden administration rewrote asylum rules recently in hopes of speeding up the process. The new procedures will likely take effect in late May. They’ll empower asylum officers to grant or deny claims.

Right now, only immigration judges have that authority at the southern border. Asylum officers only screen migrants and then hand that information off to backlogged immigration courts.

BROWN: Joining us now to talk about what these changes might mean for asylum seekers and U.S. border traffic is Victor Manjarrez. He served for many years as sector chief for the U.S. Border Patrol. Today, he is Associate Director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas El Paso.

REICHARD: Good morning to you, sir!

VICTOR MANJARREZ, GUEST: Good morning!

REICHARD: Well first of all, again, as of now, asylum officers only handle the initial screening and hand that information off to immigration judges, who are completely overwhelmed. So getting an answer on an asylum claim can take a very long time. What happens in the meantime?

MANJARREZ: Well, you’re absolutely right. It could take years. When you look at the backlog on immigration cases, just a simple immigration case, it's a backlog anywhere from 18 to 20 months right now. So in the meantime, you know, when someone's allowed to petition at the courts here in the United States, they're given what is referred to as an order to show cause. It’s that legal document says you have to go to court. But in the meantime, there's an expectation that they're not going to become a ward of the state, which means that they're going to seek employment, you know, the good productive residents, many people bring with families. So it's, you know, the ability to get people into school. And so they actually start to become part of that society, which is a big risk, because they're not sure if they're gonna win that case or not.

REICHARD: Will this change to asylum rules reduce the numbers of people released within the United States while their cases are decided?

MANJARREZ: It potentially could do that. When you go to an asylum officer, it's that step before the immigration judge that comes back. So there's the ability, but if you look across the board at the criminal justice system, just law enforcement—aside from the homeland security enterprise—people like probation officers, that would have like a very similar role have huge caseloads that they can't manage. And I have not seen where the department Homeland Security has hired the number of asylum officers which would be under the Citizenship and Immigration Services Branch. And so it appears they're gonna try to do that with current staffing, which makes it a huge task and very difficult to complete. And there's a risk. There's a really big risk. You know, what happens when someone really has a bonafide asylum claim? And because the caseload is so heavy on an asylum officer they get a claim denied and that becomes a really tragic consequence.

REICHARD: Do you think the new rules will cut down on the numbers who make asylum claims in the first place?

MANJARREZ: I don’t believe so. What we’ve seen along the border—everywhere from Rio Grande Valley to San Diego—is that what's driving these people is that small hope, there's a small chance. And when these people come up, they're usually the poorest of the poor. The vast majority are economic migrants. And so what we've seen in the last, at least in the last 30-35 years, is that people believe almost anything on that if there's a chance or hope. So I don't see that slowing down. And it's gonna be really problematic because we're seeing, you know, large numbers of migration now. I think it's only going to increase further down the road.

REICHARD: As you mentioned, a lot of the people who make asylum claims come from difficult circumstances, but by the letter of the law, an aim to better one’s life doesn’t count for asylum purposes. Who is supposed to qualify for asylum?

MANJARREZ: Well, exactly right. The vast majority we’ve seen in the last 36 months, or just less than 36 months, about 3% of the people actually qualify for asylum. And usually, the asylum case is based on on some type of persecution—it could be political persecution, sexual persecution, religious persecution—so it's those type of things that qualify someone, not the fact that they're in poverty. Right? Which again, that's that's really the economic migrant, and they will simply fail to qualify.

REICHARD: What is the state of the border crisis overall right now? Better or worse from say a year ago?

MANJARREZ: It’s horribly worse. As you may have heard, Chief Ortiz, the National Chief of Border Patrol, was kind of prepping folks saying that, hey, we're gonna hit a million arrests once the final numbers for March come in. And so it's a million arrests in a six month period. Now, in the history of the Border Patrol, going back to 1925 when they started keeping the stats, they've only hit that number about 18 times. And the high water mark was in 1986, with 1.7 million arrests. They’re already at a million arrests in a six month period. And so they definitely look like they're gonna surpass 2 million. I'd venture to guess, in conjunction with this new asylum process as well as maybe the lifting of Title 42, that we should see a surge and arrests are probably closer to 2.5 million, which is absolutely incredible.

REICHARD: Victor Manjarrez has been our guest today. Thanks so much!

MANJARREZ: Thank you.

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