TIJUANA, Mexico — They flew in from Haiti, Venezuela, and other places around the world with small rolling bags full of clothes and toys for their kids. They held their cell phones to show that, after months of waiting, they finally had appointments to enter the United States officially.
At some border crossings in northern Mexico, where confusing mazes of concrete barriers and thick fencing lead into the United States, people’s hope and joy quickly turned to despair and disbelief as soon as President Trump took office. Monday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that the CBP One app, which had been working as late as that morning, would no longer be used to let refugees into the country. Since January 2023, the app has helped almost 1 million people enter.
Applicants were told that tens of thousands of meetings that were set for February had to be canceled.
That was it. You couldn’t make a case and there was no one to talk to.
At a border crossing with San Diego in Tijuana, 400 people were let in every day through the app. Maria Mercado had to get up the nerve to check her phone.
When she finally looked, tears fell down her face. The meeting for her family was at 1, which was four hours too late.
She stood with her family so they could see the United States and said, “We don’t know what we’re going to do.”
She left Colombia many years ago, when it was being controlled by drug cartels, and went to Ecuador. When gangs attacked her new home country, she and her family ran away again, this time to Mexico in hopes of getting to the United States.
“I only want God; I don’t want anything from anyone else.” “Please answer my prayer and let us in,” she said.
People who were immigrants hugged or quietly cried around her. A lot of people just stared ahead, not sure what to do. People were told to get the CBP One app on a sign nearby. “This will help with your processing,” it said.
A lot of people, especially from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Mexico, love CBP One. They were now stuck at the border with the United States or further into Mexico.
Jairol Polo, 38, tried for six months to get an appointment in Mexico City but finally got one for Wednesday in Matamoros, which is across the bay from Brownsville, Texas. On Monday, the Cuban man flew from Mexico City to Matamoros-Brownsville, where he found out that his meeting had been canceled.
He said with a sad face while lighting a cigarette, “Imagine how we feel.”
People who had meetings in the morning got through them on time. Roman, who is 28 years old and from Venezuela, was in the last group to cross the border with the CBP One in Ciudad Juarez, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas.
Before giving his papers to U.S. authorities, he said, “We are a little safer now that we are here.” He said, “But you still don’t know what’s going to happen.”
Rober Caruzi, also from Venezuela, came into El Paso right after him. He said, “I got to the border twice and was turned away both times, but I didn’t give up hope.”
The app was down by the afternoon.
There are eight border crossings that use CBP One, which works like a lottery to give dates to 1,450 people every day. People come to the U.S. with immigration “parole.” Since it was created in 1952, former President Joe Biden used this power more than any other president.
Its end is in line with what Trump promised during the campaign, and its critics will be happy because they see it as an overly liberal magnet that draws people to the border between Mexico and the US.
It had a rough start in January 2023, but it quickly became an important part of the Biden administration’s plan to expand legal paths while making it harder for people who come in illegally to get asylum. People who support it say it gave order to the chaos of illegal crossings.
Many of Mexico’s migrant centers are now mostly full of people who are constantly tapping their phones in hopes of getting an appointment. In the U.S., Customs and Border Protection says that about 280,000 people try every day to get one of the 1,450 spots.
The end of CBP One will be paired with the return of “Remain in Mexico.” This is a holdover from Trump’s first term that made about 70,000 asylum seekers wait in Mexico for their cases in U.S. immigration court.
As deputy chief of the Border Patrol, Matthew Hudak left last year. He said that the end of CBP One could make people more likely to cross illegally. He said that it needs to be paired with something like “Remain in Mexico” for it to work.
“CBP One being closed sends the message, ‘Hey, we’re not going to let you show up; the doors are not going to be open.'” He said, “For that to make sense, there has to be some kind of consequence if you do it illegally and don’t follow the law.”
As refugees across Mexico learned of CBP One’s sudden end, they were shocked.
Early in January, 19-year-old Venezuelan Juan Andrés Rincón Ramos cried tears of joy when he finally got an asylum interview through CBP One. He had been trying for months. He had been trying for five years in Peru and seven months in Mexico to get to the United States, where his brother lives in Pittsburgh.
When he got the message that his meeting had been canceled, the dream life he had for himself in the makeshift migrant camp in Mexico City where he lives went away.
He said, “It was a moment of hope, but it didn’t last.” There was hope for the American dream, but everyone was wrong.
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