American immigration attorneys crossed into Reynosa Monday to help offer legal guidance to hundreds of migrants who have been waiting on the border for seven months without answers.
Hundreds of people crowded at Plaza Las Americas surrounded Gladis Molina Alt, the executive director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.
“Our purpose this morning is to give a brief talk on the United States’ system for children who cross without a parent,” Molina Alt told the crowd. She was accompanied by attorneys and the co-founders of the Sidewalk School, the organization that coordinated the event.
Just a block away, hundreds of people walked and drove over into the United States for the first time since the international bridges were closed down due to the pandemic in March 2020.
“The border was reopening, and there was confusion, I think, from people on whether it meant if asylum seekers could present themselves at the border,” Molina Alt said. “So, part of our intention was to provide information to families to answer that question, but also to explain what happens when kids come into care on the U.S. side.”
In March, the number of migrant children entering the country without their parents increased drastically and led to overcrowded processing centers and long processing times that exceeded federal guidelines.
Many migrant parents who arrived at the border realized they would be turned back and expelled from the U.S. if they crossed and requested asylum together, due to a pandemic-induced policy known as Title 42. However, children are exempt from that policy.
Many sent their children into the U.S. at such high rates that they overwhelmed federal agencies that were unprepared to handle the higher volume. Emergency shelters were opened across the country to alleviate the crowding in places like Customs and Border Protection’s Central Processing Center in Donna.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency that handles the release of migrant children to parents and legal guardians in the U.S., struggled to process and release children quickly enough.
“Sometimes they make the decision to send kids to the U.S. on their own. There’s a large information void and a lot of questions that people have about that,” Molina Alt said. “Our goal was to share objective information with people, but certainly, and definitely, not to encourage parents to send kids on their own.”
Though the Young Center represents immigrant children, many of the questions attorneys received from migrants in Reynosa on Monday focused on the main question that’s loomed before them for months.
“What are my chances of being able to get permission to go apply for asylum?” Molina Alt repeated.
Thousands of migrants have been sent back through Reynosa, since the practice to expel them and deny the opportunity to request asylum became the new norm at the border under the pandemic. An encampment started forming a year later in March 2021 and many people still live there waiting for the U.S. to begin accepting asylum requests.
The answer is still up in the air. The federal government, however, announced it plans to restart a Trump-era program, the Migrant Protection Protocols, that allows migrants to pursue asylum in the U.S. while living in Mexico. Administration officials previously said they planned to re-implement the program in mid-November through the Brownsville port of entry.
The informational session lasted about an hour, but attorneys hope the knowledge shared will help combat disinformation and confusion, paving the way for better decisions.
“For us, one of the big things we want to make sure of is that people don’t see our information session on Monday in Reynosa as any way encouraging parents to send their kids [alone],” Molina Alt clarified. “The specific purpose of doing that was to provide information to people so they can make an informed choice, knowing that the choice rests with the parent, ultimately. We are in no way pretending to tell a parent what is best for their child.”
