WASHINGTON, D.C. — Questions continue to swirl about the end of Title 42, the controversial public health measure President Joe Biden wants to end on Monday.

A ruling from a federal judge in the coming days could, however, keep it in place.

WHAT IS AT STAKE?

Title 42 is the pandemic public health policy that immediately expelled over a million asylum-seeking migrants during the pandemic.

Former President Donald Trump initially put the policy in place and it has continued into the Biden presidency.

Data has shown the migrants turned away over the last several years were primarily from Mexico, although they also came from other places in Central America, like Guatemala and Honduras.

Individuals from Caribbean nations like Haiti were also reportedly turned away as were some from European countries like Belarus.

Human rights groups believe the U.S. should be accommodating to those seeking persecution from other countries.

U.S. law requires the United States to accept refugees who have "well-founded" fears of persecution.

Opponents are arguing this is going to create a mass migration mess at the border and that the country is not prepared to handle the influx of migrants.

WAITING ON COURT RULING

The country is waiting on District Court Judge Robert Summerhays to rule on whether the Biden administration can end the policy.

It's possible Summerhays rules in favor of Republican attorneys general who brought the lawsuit. Summerhays has previously ruled in favor of conservatives on consequential issues.

No matter what the Trump appointee decides, an appeal is likely.

ARE WE READY?

If the judge allows Biden to end Title 42, the logical question is whether the U.S. is prepared for what could happen at the border.

Republicans and some Democrats believe there needs to be a better plan.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as Border Patrol, has told reporters they are prepared.

"The Secretary and I have had the opportunity to meet with our front line officers, agents and our workforce to ensure that we are prepared for May 23^rd and beyond," U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Tuesday during a border event with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

DHS has worked to mobilize staff and volunteers to the border in anticipation of a surge of asylum-seeking migrants when Title 42 ends.

Temporary facilities have been promised to be built as well.

Currently, around 8,000 people a day show up at America's borders. The Department of Homeland Security has said that it is preparing for the possibility of 18,000 each day once the measure is lifted.

The number of child migrants who crossed the treacherous Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama has spiked, the United Nations Children's Fund said Friday. UNICEF said that in May 2021, 500 children were detected crossing on the jungle trail. But in May 2022, that number had risen to 2,000.

The fund estimates that about 5,000 children have crossed the Darien Gap so far this year.

Plagued by wild animals, swollen rivers, rough terrain and thieves, the gap claims many lives each year. The overall number of migrants crossing the land bridge between South and North America doubled.

The overall number of migrants crossing the land bridge between South and North America doubled, with about 32,000 crossing so far this year, compared to 16,000 in 2021.

To his family, Roberto Villegas was the heart of the household.

“He’s the best father I could have ever asked for,” said his daughter Michelle, who will be entering high school after the summer.

In 2019, Roberto was deported.

“I get a call and he's like, 'I need you to sit down. I need you to just breathe.' He said, "Don't get scared, I just got pulled over by ICE,'” said his wife Raquel.

Raquel says Roberto was once in the U.S. legally, but more than 20 years ago, when he was coming back in the states from Mexico, he said he was a US citizen, when he was not. The penalty for lying about citizenship status is a permanent ban from living in the country. There's no appeals process, no way to fight it. His wife, kids and brothers in the U.S. were stunned.

“It's life-changing and not in a good way, a really important person just gets taken away from you and it's really hard to get accustomed to it,” said Roberto's son Jared, who is 20 years old.

Jared has taken a job to help the family pay their bills.

As the Villegas family learned, immigration laws can be very black and white. According to FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group, 1.7 million Americans have an undocumented spouse.

“The only way to get through this is to change the law,” said Kali Pliegro, the president of an effort to do exactly that. She wants there to be a pathway to citizenship for undocumented spouses with families in the U.S. It's part of the American Families United Bill.

The bill has dozens of Democratic co-sponsors and three Republicans in the house. That imbalance right now is something they’re working to fix. With concerns over border security and letting the wrong people back into the country, the bill’s advocates know this is an obstacle to get more Republicans on board.

“ There's nothing like a, a blanket approval involved. It's a case-by-case basis of judgment, whether that case merits residency,” said Kali.

“That’s why I like this bill, because without a doubt, you can look into my brother and you can see, 'Oh, this guy never had a fail to yield ticket, he paid all his taxes,'” said Roberto’s brother Joel.

This bill would be the only way Roberto could live in the U.S. again.

“When I talk to my senators or representatives, especially here in Texas, their first response is we want to secure the borders. Yes, I want you to secure the borders, but we also need to think about those families who are separated, who are US citizen families,” said Raquel.

As conversations continue about the best way to secure our borders, families stuck in the middle of policy ask for empathy and hope that a middle ground can be achieved.

“I really want people to understand that he isn't a criminal. He's my dad. He is a son. He is a husband. He is a father. And he deserves to be over here,” said Michelle.

An alarming trend is emerging in south Florida where officials are seeing a rising number of migrants, primarily Haitians and Cubans, journeying to U.S. shores on makeshift boats.U.S. Coast Guard crews have intercepted more than 6,000 Cubans since last October, according to the agency, the most in a fiscal year since the 1990s."We've seen this before. It's a natural phenomenon. However, seeing the uptick for us is really concerning and the fact that we're seeing more individuals on not-so-seaworthy vessels, putting a significant amount of those individuals at very dangerous risk for loss of life," said Walter Slosar, chief patrol agent of the Miami Sector.For years, Cubans have been fleeing the island, but recent unrest, persecution, and shortages of basic goods have pushed more to leave."Individuals have come to us with stories of persecution from the local government for their inability to participate in certain events, for not agreeing with local and communist policy of the island. It's not just them but also many stories of family members, friends that have been apprehended, detained for minor, non-criminal offenses," said David Claros, director of Immigration Legal Services Southeast Region at Church World Service, adding that he's hiring additional staff to meet the demand.Patrols here are complicated by the varying terrain, requiring coordination among agencies on land, air, and sea. CNN recently embedded with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations, the U.S. Border Patrol, and Coast Guard.The agencies will work together to identify and interdict migrants so they may be repatriated. If they make landfall, however, they're brought into Border Patrol custody.While the Coast Guard tries to intercept migrants before they make it to the US coast, thousands have made it to shore. So far this fiscal year, border authorities arrested nearly 3,600 in the Miami Sector, which covers more than 1,200 miles of Florida's coast, up from just over 1,000 last year.Authorities encounter a wide array of vessels out at sea and on shore, ranging from surfboards tied together and boats with limited provisions and no navigation system for what is often a days-long journey. Just an hour into a Coast Guard patrol, crew members spotted a makeshift vessel at sea with roughly eight people.And it's not just Cubans. Officials are also grappling with an increasing number of Haitian migrants journeying by sea. The Coast Guard has responded to incidents of large sail freighters carrying dozens, if not hundreds of, Haitian migrants, putting those on board at great risk."The conditions on board were horrible," said Mark Lamphere, a Coast Guard marine interdiction agent, recalling a vessel that arrived at the Florida coast this year."There were reports of injured people in the hull, so I had to jump down in there and it was just obvious standing room only," he said. Two hundred of them packed in there and they would defecate and urinate right where they're standing."Slosar acknowledged the demand on resources to address the new trends."We're all working with finite resources, and as we encounter these individuals, you don't know who's on that boat. It is our mission to understand who is coming into the country. It takes our agents time to bring them into our custody, make sure that they're healthy and that they're clean and that they're fed and they're safe and then identify exactly who they are," he said.

HARLINGEN, Texas —

U.S. authorities on Thursday expanded slots to seek asylum at land crossings with Mexico through a mobile app for the second time in less than a month, seeking to dispel doubts it isn't a viable option.

There are now 1,250 appointments daily at eight land crossings, up from 1,000 previously and 740 in early May.

The increase “reflects our commitment to continue to expand lawful options for migrants,” said Blas Nuñez-Neto, the Homeland Security Department's assistant secretary for border and immigration policy. "We’ll continue to expand appointments at the border as our operations allow in terms of capacity.”

Nuñez-Neto called CBP One a “safe and orderly option” during a visit to Harlingen, Texas. He announced the expansion a week after Texas sued to end what the state government considers an illegal method of boosting immigration.

Demand has far outstripped supply from the Jan. 12 start, prompting many to consider crossing the border illegally or giving up. Enrique Lucero, migrant affairs director for the city of Tijuana, said the latest increase would have little impact considering how many are waiting.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It’s still very low and not enough for the pent-up demand.”

After pandemic-related asylum restrictions ended May 11, the Biden administration continued its embrace of a carrot-and-stick approach to the border, introducing a general ban on asylum for people who travel through other countries, like Mexico, and enter the U.S. illegally.

Video below: Migrants ride so-called 'Train of Death' hoping to make it to US

U.S. authorities are trying to funnel people to “legal pathways” like CBP One and parole for up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who apply online with a financial sponsor and arrive by air.

CBP One is for people of any nationality who apply in central and northern and northern Mexico and enter by land.

The expansion on Thursday was met with cautious optimism and mild indifference among some of the 150 people, mostly families with young children, camped on a sidewalk at a border crossing where Tijuana leads to San Diego, hoping U.S. officials admit them without a CBP One appointment.

They said it appeared authorities were allowing about one family every several hours, enough to create a growing bottleneck over the last week as word spread it was an alternative.

Carlos Vasquez, 25, reached southern Mexico from Honduras in January with his pregnant wife and their 4-year-old daughter and started trying daily on the app once he was in central Mexico. He became frustrated and, on Monday, began sleeping at the border camp, hoping U.S. officials would take mercy on his family.

Vasquez said the increase to 1,250 a day was good news but not enough for a major impact.

“We are many and there are few chosen,” he said.

Sergio Hernandez, 35, scored an appointment on May 24 after more than five months of daily effort. The appointments are scheduled up to two weeks out.

Hernandez, a Guatemalan who plans to seek asylum while living with a childhood friend in Kansas City, Missouri, said he had received countless “system error” messages before confirming a slot. He was once given a date on his phone screen but email confirmation never arrived.

“They keep improving it little by little,” he said.

Hernandez, who was traveling alone, said perceptions persist that larger families are at a disadvantage, which U.S. officials deny.

Beatriz Melchor, 47, said she would wait to see if the latest increase has an impact. She has been trying the app for about six weeks with her husband and son and said changes announced in early May have produced no noticeable benefit.

The changes included giving higher priority to asylum-seekers who have been trying the app longest and making appointments available throughout the day instead of all at once, which created mad rushes.

“We have more than a month trying and there are people here nine days, four days, and they get their appointments,” she said.

Melchor said returning to her hometown in the Mexican state of Guerrero wasn’t an option. Criminals blocked exits and entrances and she had to escape. If the mobile app doesn’t work, she is prepared to wait, though she said Tijuana is unsafe.

___

Spagat reported from Tijuana, Mexico.

The immigration process includes years of hurdles to get to citizenship, from the initial application to getting a green card, needing to legally hold it for three to five years and then actually going through the naturalization process.

Newsy's Ben Schamisso and 25 other immigrants became U.S. citizens at a federal courthouse in Chicago last Friday. It was a solemn and emotional moment years in the making.

"I took the oath and that was it, so I am an American citizen and it feels pretty good, Schamisso said. "It's a new day."

Because his wife is American, he was able to move to the U.S. from Belgium in 2015 with a green card.

He's been qualified for citizenship since 2018 but only started filling out the 20-page naturalization form in late 2020. At the time, the Trump administration planned to soon double the filing fee from $640 to nearly $1,200. The fee hike never materialized, but it did push him to apply.

A year later, Schamisso received an appointment for the infamous naturalization interview, when applicants are tested on their knowledge of English and civics. During the civics part, an officer asks 10 questions from a list of 100, and test-takers need six correct answers to pass.  

A 2018 national survey found that only one in three Americans would pass the test. He passed with one "frustrating" wrong answer.

“The question was, ‘What are the three first words of the U.S. Constitution?’ and I said quickly, ‘We are the people.’ Then I said, ‘No, it's actually we the people,' but that was too late," Schamisso said.

The interview also includes dozens of questions about the applicant's background. 

"About whether I was a member of any terrorist organization or a communist, or whether I had committed any crime, whether I had spent time in jail," Schamisso said. "Every single crime you can think of, they asked if I had committed it.” 

In the end, it was all worth it, with Schamisso saying the ceremony alone made him proud of the achievement. The U.S. government naturalized about 625,000 new citizens in the fiscal year 2020, and more than 7.3 million immigrants over the last decade.  

While Schamisso is from Europe, most naturalized Americans hail from Mexico, India, and the Philippines.  

The case of his, with his wife sponsoring him, is how it goes in about 28% of cases. Come November, he'll be allowed to vote in U.S. elections for the first time as a new American. 

This story was originally published by Ben Schamisso of Newsy

Democrats wielded demands to fix the nation’s broken immigration system as a cudgel against Republicans in the 2020 campaign. Elect us, went the argument, and we’ll stop the cruel treatment of migrants at the border, and put in place lasting and humane policies that work.

A year into Joe Biden’s presidency, though, action on the issue has been hard to find and there is growing consternation privately among some in the party that the Biden administration can’t find the right balance on immigration.

Video above: Biden border policies went from hopeful to chaotic

Publicly, it’s another story. Most Washington lawmakers are largely holding their tongues, unwilling to criticize their leader on a polarizing topic that has created divisions within the party — especially as concerns mount over whether Democrats can hold on to power come next year.

It's a hard balancing act to pull off, said Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for America’s Voice, an immigration reform group. Especially when Republicans are unrelenting in their negativity toward the president, even a little friendly fire can be a challenge.

“It’s hard but they've got to do it,” he said. “They’re going to face voters next year, all the people on the Hill. Biden isn’t, they are. And they have to be clear they’re pushing Biden to be the Democratic president we elected, rather than being scared of the issues because the politics are difficult.”

Democrats have pointed to the recent House approval of a huge spending bill backed by the White House that would allow for expanded work permits and some other, less ambitious immigration provisions. When Biden took office, he promised a pathway to U.S. citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally. Democrats say the measures in the spending bill are enough to show the party won’t shy away from the immigration issue during next year’s midterms.

“I don’t see it as the fault of the president per se or ... these challenges that we’re facing today, solely falling on the shoulders of the president,” said Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents a district in El Paso, Texas, across the border from Juarez, Mexico. “It is a collective obligation that we have and I think Democrats have solutions and we need to lean in on them.”

Her Democratic colleague, Rep. Joaquin Castro, from San Antonio, ducked a question when asked if House members in swing districts will be forced to run away from Biden in 2022, saying “I’m going to wait on political discussions.”

But Castro added that the party had done as much as it could do on immigration this session, given Senate rules that have prevented larger legislation on the issue from advancing with the required minimum of 60 votes in that chamber.

“Right now, Democrats have control of the White House, the Senate and the House and we have pushed as hard as we can with the number that we have in the chambers to get protections from deportation, workplace permits, driver’s licenses, travel abilities,” Castro said.

Former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who recently announced he’d run for Texas governor, has been one of a few Democrats to put the border front and center, heading almost immediately to the U.S.-Mexico border after he announced he was running, where he suggested the White House is doing its party no favors.

“It’s clear that Biden could be doing a better job at the border,” O’Rourke said during an interview with KTVT TV in Dallas-Fort Worth. “It is not enough of a priority.”

Like most top Democrats, O’Rourke will have to counter the narrative pushed by Republicans that an increase in the number of people crossing the border illegally this year has reached “crisis” levels. Incumbent Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign accused O’Rourke of supporting Biden’s “open borders” policies and financed billboards along the border featuring O’Rourke’s face morphing into that of the president.

Nick Rathod, Rourke’s campaign manager, sees “neglect, I think by Democrats across the board, not just the Biden administration, in engaging in an authentic manner in those communities” along the border.

“It’s sort of created a vacuum. What we want to do is fill that space.”

But immigration is a complex issue, and no administration has been able to fix it. And Biden is trapped between the conflicting interests of showing compassion while dealing with migrants coming to the country — illegally — seeking a better life.

The administration has said it is focusing on root causes of immigration, and working to broker long-term solutions that make migrants want to stay in their homelands. They’ve pushed through regulations that aim to adjudicate asylum cases faster so migrants don’t wait in limbo, and they’ve worked to diminish the massive backlog of cases.

But mostly, Biden has spent much of the past year undoing Trump-era rules widely viewed as cruel that clamped down on asylum seekers, gutted the number of refugees allowed to the U.S. and then shuttered the border entirely in the name of COVID-19.

Despite that effort, Biden has faced a heap of criticism from progressives and immigrant advocates who say he is still making too much use of inhumane Trump-era policies.

One of the most criticized is the “Remain in Mexico” program, where migrants are sent to wait for resolution of their immigration claims over the border to Mexico in fetid makeshift refugee camps. It was put on hold after a judge ruled it was improper, but according to court papers, the Biden administration is waiting on final agreements with Mexico to start doing it again.

“We reject a system where people facing life and death consequences are forced to navigate a complex legal system — in a language they may not speak and in a culture which they may not be accustomed to — alone,” the Catholic Legal Immigration Network said in a statement.

Another is a provision, known as Title 42, that gives federal health officials powers during a pandemic to take extraordinary measures to limit transmission of an infectious disease. The White House has appealed a judge's ruling that ended the regulation.

The administration has used the provision to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants who entered Texas. After viral images surfaced of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics, Biden's team took heat from even the staunchest of allies.

Republicans are hammering border security, intent on keeping the issue in the headlines. The issue remains a high priority to some voters. A CNN poll earlier this month showed 14% of Americans identified immigration as the top issue facing the county, trailing behind the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The U.S. Border Patrol reported more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border from September 2020 to September 2021, more than quadruple the number in the prior fiscal year and the highest annual total on record.

The number of encounters had dropped over the previous 12 months to around 400,000, as the pandemic slowed global migration. But the rebound is now higher than the previous record set in 2000, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. The tally includes both expulsions when migrants are turned away immediately, and apprehensions when they're detained by U.S. authorities, at least temporarily.

The U.S. system is still ill-equipped to manage such a crush, though career immigration officials warned of a coming surge. Border stations are temporary holding places not meant for long-term care. It's a massive logistical challenge, especially when dealing with children who cross alone and require higher standards of care and coordination across agencies.

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

ALBANY, N.Y. -- In April, the governor of New York passed the state's 2020 budget, and in it, an

amendment was made




to a law that was passed last year allowing undocumented immigrants to get a state driver’s license.

The Green Light Law also prohibited the sharing of DMV information to any federal agency in charge of immigration.

Last month, the original law was amended as part of the 2020 budget, now making it an E Felony for any law enforcement officer to share DMV records with another law enforcement agency in charge of immigration like ICE or DHS.

“Border Patrol for example, working the highway in the middle of the night and pulls over a vehicle, they can’t run the plates to determine who owns that vehicle,” said U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York J.P. Kennedy. “I think it’s legislating obstruction and it’s very concerning to me.”

Kennedy says this was done silently, amidst a global pandemic, and has concerns for the safety and security of New York residents because of this.

“We’ve seen how important communication and coordination in coming up with a response to the pandemic and sort of causing people to work in isolation, it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said of not being able to share information. “I’m very concerned about this and I think it’s very unfortunate and makes me really question the motives of the individuals that enacted this law, if their professed interest in public safety and public health is really as important as they say they are.”

Kennedy says the law amendment also has a national impact.

“If any law enforcement officer in Texas ran across a New York State-registered vehicle, they could not run that plate if it was any officer who was involved in the enforcement of immigration law.”

“This is shocking. This is unheard of and especially during a pandemic that someone, the Governor, who is under so much pressure thought about that to put that in there,” said Erie County Clerk Mickey Kearns. “We just had I think it was 29 people, law enforcement people, in the State of New York that just died from COVID, and they’re criminals now?”

“They basically criminalize police work in this budget,” he said.

“I just think it’s wrong to put the lives and rights of illegal immigrants over law enforcement,” said Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw.

WKBW reached out to the Governor’s office for a statement and have not heard back.

This story was originally published by Hannah Buehler at WKBW.

DEL RIO, Texas —

The U.S. plans to speed up its efforts to expel Haitian migrants on flights to their Caribbean homeland, officials said Saturday as agents poured into a Texas border city where thousands of Haitians have gathered after suddenly crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that it moved about 2,000 of the migrants who had gathered under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio to other locations on Friday for processing and possible removal from the United States. It also said it would have 400 agents and officers in the area by Monday morning and was prepared to send more if necessary.

Video above: U.S. plans mass expulsions of Haitian migrants

The announcement marks a swift response to the sudden arrival of Haitians in Del Rio, a city of about 35,000 people that's roughly 145 miles west of San Antonio and sits on a relatively remote stretch of border that lacks the capacity to hold and process such large numbers of people.

A U.S. official told The Associated Press on Friday that operational capacity and Haiti’s willingness to accept flights will determine how many there will be. The official said progress was being made on negotiations with Haitian authorities.

The official said the U.S would likely fly five to eight planes a day, starting Sunday, while another official expected no more than two a day and said all migrants would be tested for COVID-19. Both officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed traffic to vehicles and pedestrians in both directions Friday at the only border crossing between Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico, "to respond to urgent safety and security needs." Travelers were being directed indefinitely to a crossing in Eagle Pass, 57 miles (91 kilometers) away.

Crowd estimates varied, but Val Verde County Sheriff Frank Joe Martinez said Friday that there were about 13,700 new arrivals in Del Rio. Migrants pitched tents and built makeshift shelters from giant reeds known as carrizo cane. Many bathed and washed clothing in the river.

The flight plan, while potentially massive in scale, hinges on how Haitians respond. They might have to decide whether to stay put at the risk of being sent back to an impoverished homeland wracked by poverty and political instability or return to Mexico. Unaccompanied children are exempt from fast-track expulsions.

DHS said, "our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey."

"Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion," the agency wrote. "Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted."

Stephen Miller, the main architect of former President Donald Trump's hardline policies and a frequent critic of the Biden administration, expressed doubt that Haiti's government would agree to the number of flights for a large-scale operation. He recounted daily calls with U.S. State Department officials last year over Haiti's resistance to flights, with Haiti relenting only under the threat of sanctions.

About 500 Haitians were ordered off buses by Mexican immigration authorities in the state of Tamaulipas, about 120 miles (200 kilometers) south of the Texas border, the state government said in a news release Friday. They continued toward the border on foot.

Haitians have been migrating to the U.S. in large numbers from South America for several years, many having left their Caribbean nation after a devastating earthquake in 2010. After jobs dried up from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, many made the dangerous trek by foot, bus and car to the U.S. border, including through the infamous Darien Gap, a Panamanian jungle.

It is unclear how such a large number amassed so quickly, though many Haitians have been assembling in camps on the Mexican side of the border to wait while deciding whether to attempt to enter the United States.

U.S. authorities are being severely tested after Biden quickly dismantled Trump administration policies that Biden considered cruel or inhumane, most notably one requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while waiting for U.S. immigration court hearings.

A pandemic-related order to immediately expel migrants without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum that was introduced in March 2020 remains in effect, but unaccompanied children and many families have been exempt. During his first month in office, Biden chose to exempt children traveling alone on humanitarian grounds.

Mexico has agreed to take in expelled families only from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, creating an opening for Haitians and other nationalities.

In August, U.S. authorities stopped migrants nearly 209,000 times at the border, which was close to a 20-year high even though many of the stops involved repeat crossers because there are no legal consequences for being expelled under the pandemic authority.

___

Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writers Ben Fox, Alexandra Jaffe and Colleen Long in Washington contributed to this report.

President-elect Joe Biden plans to unveil a sweeping immigration bill on Day One of his administration. It would provide an eight-year path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. without legal status, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the legislation. It's a massive reversal from the Trump administration’s harsh immigration policies.

The legislation puts Biden on track to deliver on a major campaign promise after four years of President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies. But it does not include beefed-up border security, which makes passage in Congress in doubt.

It is set to be introduced after Biden takes the oath of office Wednesday.

Biden made a similar promise during the final presidential debate in October.

"I’m going to send to the United States Congress a pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people," Biden said. "And all those so called Dreamers, those DACA kids, they’re going to be immediately certified again, to be able to stay in this country, and put on a path to citizenship."

Biden has previously said that he would give immigrants seeking asylum a day in court rather than holding them in detention, an issue that many Republicans disagree with.

"The catch and release, you know what he’s talking about there? If in fact, you had a family, came across, they’re arrested. They, in fact, were given a date to show up for their hearing. They were released. And guess what, they showed up for a hearing," Biden said in October.

DENVER — Seventeen years ago, 15-year-old Bianca Acosta couldn’t look her mother in the eyes as she bid goodbye to her family and Mexico, seeking safety, security, and a career in the United States.

Acosta was born and raised in a small village in Zacatecas, Mexico.

“No one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark,” Acosta said, quoting poet Warsan Shire.

Acosta embarked on a journey to the U.S. with a group of 15 people guided by a "coyote," a smuggler.

Only five people, including herself, made it through the two-month journey. Tapping into those memories is emotionally tolling.

“I was 15, and it was scary,” Acosta said. “I have PTSD.”

Acosta moved in with her family in Colorado. Her decision to pack up and leave opened doors to a career out of reach in her homeland. She graduated from the University of Northern Colorado and pursued a job in education.

Her schooling and safety came with many sacrifices.

“My grandfather passed in 2017, and I couldn’t see him,” Acosta said. “I have two siblings that I don’t know in person.”

Her immigration status as a DACA recipient prevented her from traveling outside the United States. DACA recipients can only travel if they can prove it’s for education, employment, or a humanitarian reason like a funeral or a sick family member.

Acosta did not qualify for any categories until last year, when her mother’s heart problems worsened. Fearful of her mother’s health, Acosta applied for "advanced parole," which allows immigrants to travel outside of the U.S. and return lawfully.

Still, it comes with risks, including the possibility of getting stuck outside of the United States.

Acosta went to the immigration office in Colorado to help expedite her application process, but she said she was told it would take eight to nine months unless her mother died. Determined, Acosta pushed forward and prayed to her ancestors. She was eventually approved for a three-month visit to Mexico.

“I was like, 'I’m going to see my mom, I am going to be able to tell her like, here is your runaway child; I’m here I’m home, I’m home,'” Acosta said.

For nearly two decades, she’s held on to childhood memories and phone calls. Technology in her small village is behind, video calls aren’t an option, and phone lines are sometimes down for weeks.

“My mom doesn’t know I’m coming, it’s going to be a surprise,” Acosta said. “I want to say, 'I’m sorry I couldn’t come before, sorry I couldn’t be there when she was sick, and to see my siblings grow up.'”

It’s an unexpected gift heavy with emotion. Acosta worries she may not recognize her mother after 17 years.

To help fund Acosta's extended trip to Mexico, a mentor launched a GoFundMe.

Acosta hopes to raise $5,000 to cover her rent and other expenses in the United States while she’s gone. Her 14-year-old daughter is in high school and will stay with a family member while she’s gone.

“I don’t think nothing that I ever do will give me back those 17 years that I missed, walking alongside my family, my land, my people,” Acosta said.

While it’s been challenging, she doesn’t regret her decision to leave. Over the years, their bond has grown stronger, and Acosta can't wait to make corn tortillas with her mother next to her.

The excitement to reunite with her mom steals her sleep as she inches closer to Saturday, the day she plans to begin her journey back home. Acosta says if she has to, she will sell her call to cover her expenses.

Adi Guajardo at KMGH first reported this story.

Within hours of taking office, President Joe Biden issued more than a dozen executive orders, memos and proclamations.

Executive action by the president is one of the fastest and most effective way for the federal government to take action.

“The administration wants to be seen as taking swift action on many of the crises that the country currently faces,” said Michael Berry, a political science professor at University of Colorado Denver.

He says we should expect more executive action, but major reforms will have to be signed off by another branch of government.

“When we talk about major kinds of reforms or economic stimulus or investing more in public health, those sorts of investments likely require congressional approval,” said Berry.

Congress controls funding for the federal government, but it can’t act nearly as quickly as the president can.

Some of the areas Biden has issued executive orders in are the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy, immigration, the environment and civil rights.

“I think the signal from the administration is that immigration is going to be an important item on their agenda and some of the substance of some of the announcements we’re seeing is they’ve appeared to be taking seriously some of the promises that the Biden-Harris campaign made,” said César Garcia Hernandez, a professor of Law at the University of Denver.

The Biden administration issued multiple orders and memos reinforcing its stance on immigration including reaffirming DACA and halting construction on the boarder wall.

Possibly the most important task of his presidency is reining in the pandemic and increasing vaccine distribution is a key part of that.

“And one of the problems is that if something really boring happens like you don’t have enough caps for your vials. That’s just as bad as if something went wrong in manufacturing of the vaccine itself,” said Govind Persad, also a professor at the University of Denver.

He has been keeping an eye on the new president's response to the pandemic.

That will include using federal resources and making more of a national war time effort to fight the virus.

“One big aspect of this I’m talking about is using federal resources to support states to have high capacity sites for doing vaccinations. This is where the analogy of a war time effort might be interesting,” said Persad.

Congress will have a lot on their plate dealing with a possible impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump, leaving a lot of these issues to Biden and the executive branch.

The Department of Homeland Security announced this week that it will not conduct immigration enforcement activities at or near coronavirus vaccine sites.

The announcement comes as federal officials continue to encourage the public, regardless of legal immigration status, to get vaccinated from the virus.

The DHS says that it has a long-standing practice of not conducting immigration-related arrests at health care facilities and similar places except in extreme circumstances.

“DHS and its Federal government partners fully support equal access to the COVID-19 vaccines and vaccine distribution sites for undocumented immigrants,” DHS said in a statement. “It is a moral and public health imperative to ensure that all individuals residing in the United States have access to the vaccine. DHS encourages all individuals, regardless of immigration status, to receive the COVID-19 vaccine once eligible under local distribution guidelines.”

In a paper released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, it showed that the spread of the coronavirus is of particular concern for undocumented immigrants. Nearly 44% of undocumented immigrants in the US lack health care insurance.

“Many noncitizen immigrants work in essential jobs that are likely to be included in initial priority groups for COVID-19 vaccination, but they face a variety of potential barriers to obtaining the vaccine, including access-related barriers, confusion about eligibility and potential costs, concerns about health and economic impacts of side effects, and immigration-related fears,” KFF said. “Given these barriers, efforts to minimize access barriers and targeted outreach and information will be important for facilitating access to vaccination for immigrant families.”

SAN DIEGO —

Video above: Texas ally to waiting migrants: Don't lose heart

The Biden administration on Friday announced plans for tens of thousands of asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico for their next immigration court hearings to be released in the United States while their cases proceed.

The first of an estimated 25,000 asylum-seekers in Mexico with active cases will be allowed in the United States on Feb. 19, authorities said. They plan to start slowly with two border crossings each processing up to 300 people a day and a third crossing taking fewer. Administration officials declined to name them out of fear they may encourage a rush of people to those locations.

The move is a major step toward dismantling one of former President Donald Trump's most consequential policies to deter asylum-seekers from coming to the U.S. About 70,000 asylum-seekers were enrolled in “Remain in Mexico,” officially called “Migrant Protection Protocols,” since it was introduced in January 2019.

On Biden's first day in office, the Homeland Security Department suspended the policy for new arrivals. Since then, some asylum-seekers picked up at the border have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court.

Biden is quickly making good on a campaign promise to end the policy, which the Trump administration said was critical to reversing a surge of asylum-seekers that peaked in 2019. But the policy also exposed people to violence in Mexican border cities and made it extremely difficult for them to find lawyers and communicate with courts about their cases.

“As President Biden has made clear, the U.S. government is committed to rebuilding a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “This latest action is another step in our commitment to reform immigration policies that do not align with our nation’s values.”

Homeland Security said the move “should not be interpreted as an opening for people to migrate irregularly to the United States.” Administration officials have said repeatedly that the vast majority of people who cross the border illegally are quickly expelled under a public health order in place since the pandemic struck in March, but releases of some asylum-seeking families in Texas and California has worked against that messaging.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday that she was concerned that limited releases in the U.S. may encourage others to cross illegally because “we don’t want people to put themselves in danger at a time where it is not the right time to come, because we have not had time to put in place a humane and moral system and process.”

Hearings for people enrolled in “Remain in Mexico” have been suspended since June due to the pandemic. Getting word out on when to report to the border for release in the United States may prove a daunting job.

Homeland Security said it would soon announce a “virtual registration process” available online and by phone for people to learn where and when they should report. It urged asylum-seekers not to report to the border unless instructed.

Asylum-seekers will be tested for COVID-19 before entering the U.S.

The announcement provides no relief to people whose cases were dismissed or denied, though administration officials did not rule out additional measures. Advocates argue that communication problems, including lack of working addresses in Mexico, caused some to miss hearings and lose their cases as a result.

More people are getting stopped crossing the border illegally since Biden took office.

Raul Ortiz, deputy chief of the Border Patrol, said Tuesday that more than 3,000 people had been stopped crossing the border illegally in each of the previous 10 days, compared to a daily average of 2,426 in January.

About 50 to 80 adults and children have been arriving daily since Jan. 27 at Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, which temporarily houses people released by the Border Patrol, said Sister Norma Pimentel, the group’s executive director. The charity tests for COVID-19 and sends anyone who tests positive to a hotel for isolation.

Jewish Family Service of San Diego housed 191 asylum-seekers the first 10 days of February after the were released by U.S. authorities, up from 144 in January and 54 in December, said Eitan Peled, the group’s border services advocate. They are quarantined in hotels for 10 days.

President Joe Biden campaigned on the promise of offering a more compassionate America for immigrants. But just months into his presidency, his administration faces a situation at the southern border that’s forcing more and more unaccompanied children into what some describe as jail-like conditions.

During a briefing Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to call the situation a crisis. CNN reports that more than 100,000 migrants have been encountered at the border in the last four weeks alone — the highest that figure has been in the past five years.

The New York Times and CBS News report that about 3,200 migrant children are currently being held in U.S. custody after crossing the border unaccompanied. More than half of those children have been held longer than three days — the maximum amount of time allowed under the law.

So, how did the Biden administration find itself in such a situation, and does it have a plan moving forward?

Why are more immigrants coming to the U.S.?

It’s impossible to determine every migrant’s reason for choosing to make the dangerous trek to the U.S., but immigration from Central American countries like Nicaragua and Honduras has been on the rise in recent years as many from the region flee poverty and gang violence. Those immigrants travel through the entirety of Mexico and attempt to enter the U.S. at the southern border, many of them claiming asylum.

It’s also possible that many migrants are choosing now to enter America because Biden campaigned on being more compassionate to undocumented immigrants.

Biden's predecessor, former President Donald Trump, sought to deter immigration by separating families at the border, limiting asylum claims, making asylum seekers wait for their hearings in Mexico or another country, and giving Immigration and Customs Enforcement more leeway to deport immigrants already in the country.

With promises to undo some of those policies, immigration to the U.S. may seem more attractive to those seeking to flee their countries.

Last week, Sec. of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asked migrants to hold off on journeying to the U.S., saying that it would “take time” for the Biden administration to build out its new immigration policies. But Mayorkas’ pleas have done little to slow immigration.

Why is the Biden administration keeping children in custody?

Unlike the Trump administration, Biden is not separating children from their families. However, when unaccompanied minors are encountered at the border, the administration has adopted a policy of keeping them in custody rather than letting them roam Mexico or other Central American countries alone.

When Customs and Border Protection encounters an unaccompanied minor, they bring them back to a Border Patrol station for processing, where they can be held for up to three days. After that, the migrant children are supposed to be transferred to a facility run by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is said to be a more humane environment. From there, the children are then matched with vetted sponsor families in the U.S.

However, under COVID-19 pandemic guidelines, the Health and Human Services resettlement camps are operating under capacity restrictions, cutting the number of beds available to migrants.

The lack of room in the HHS resettlement camps means Customs and Border Protection have been forced to hold children in their Border stations.

Does the Biden administration have a plan?

In the short term, HHS has said it will allow its resettlement facilities to return to pre-pandemic capacity levels, so long as they implement mitigation measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19. CBP has also constructed tent complexes in the hopes of moving more children out of the Border stations. The tents offer more accommodations but aren’t suitable long-term solutions.

In addition, Psaki said Tuesday that the administration is “working to implement changes” that would allow the U.S. to safely house more children at the border.

In the long term, the Biden administration has proposed an immigration reform bill that would study the root causes of migration and could potentially offer foreign aid to Central American countries in hopes of stemming it in the future.

WASHINGTON — Both Monica Camacho Perez and Norma Irene Alvarez, dreamers who we recently met, believe the time for action is now.

"I was brought here at the age of 7," Perez, a DACA recipient who works in Baltimore's school system, said.

"I've been told to go back and dream," Alvarez said from a picnic table in El Paso, Texas.

Even though the women are thousands of miles away from each other, their stories are similar. Both came to the United States as a child by crossing the border illegally.

Both were granted protections under the DACA program by President Barack Obama. Both were thrown into limbo under President Donald Trump. Now, both want action by President Joe Biden.

"I want my green card," Alvarez said.

"I’m thankful for DACA, but we want a pathway to citizenship," Perez said.

UPCOMING VOTES

Congress will vote on the The Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act on Thursday. If signed into law, both would represent historic legislation.

The Dream and Promise Act would create a pathway to citizenship for Alvarez and Perez. While they would initially be extended protected status, after ten years, full citizenship would be offered.

A clean criminal record and a GED would be required.

The Farm Workforce and Modernization Act would not apply to the women, but it would apply to thousands of farm workers around the United States. It would allow immigrants who work on farms to become a protected class. As long as they work on a farm for 100 days a year, after four years green cards would be extended.

CHALLENGE IN BECOMING LAW

While both pieces of legislation are expected to pass the House of Representatives, actually becoming law remains a challenge. Sixty senators would need to support the legislation and right now, the votes are not there for passage.

The issue is made more complicated by the emerging situation on the border with a surge in migrants attempting to cross in recent weeks.

The number of immigrants attempting to enter the U.S. last month was up 28% from January.

It is up 174% from February 2020. While many adults are sent back, unaccompanied children stay in government facilities.

WASHINGTON —

Video above: White House taps nonprofits to help pick asylum-seekers

The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the government can indefinitely detain certain immigrants who say they will face persecution or torture if they are deported to their native countries.

Over the dissent of three liberal justices, the court held 6-3 that the immigrants are not entitled to a hearing about whether they should be released while the government evaluates their claims.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote for the court that "those aliens are not entitled to a bond hearing."

The case involves people who had been previously deported and, when detained after re-entering the United States illegally, claimed that they would be persecuted or tortured if sent back.

An immigration officer determined that the immigrants had a "reasonable fear" for their safety if returned to their countries, setting in motion an evaluation process that can take months or years.

The issue for the court was whether the government could hold the immigrants without having an immigration judge weigh in.

WASHINGTON —

White House press secretary Jen Psaki declined to provide a specific date for when the media will get access to Border Patrol facilities temporarily holding thousands of migrant children seeking to live in the United States, but said Sunday the Biden administration was committed to transparency and "we're working to get that done as soon as we can."

More than 16,000 unaccompanied children were in government custody as of Thursday, including about 5,000 in substandard Customs and Border Protection facilities.

Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill have been calling on the administration to open the facilities to the cameras, asserting that the current policy is designed to keep the public from "fully realizing" what is happening at the border.

Republican officials are also blaming the Biden administration for actions they say are leading more people from Central America to seek entry into the United States. "It's not a crisis, it's a complete loss of sovereignty down there," Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said.

Graham recently visited the border and said he saw a facility designed to hold 80 children with about 1,000 in it. He called on the administration to turn away every unaccompanied minor after testing them for "human trafficking abuses."

"If you don't, we'll have 150,000 a month by this summer," Graham said Sunday.

U.S. authorities reported encounters with more than 100,000 migrants on the southern border in February, the highest since a four-month streak in 2019.

Encounters have averaged about 5,000 people per day throughout March, which would be about a 50% increase over February if those figures hold for the entire month.

White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said the surge was cyclical.

"They're not the result of one administration's policies or another administration's policies. They're the result of, for example, weather disasters in the region. They're the result of people fleeing poverty and violence," Bedingfield said. "So we saw spikes in 2014. We saw them in 2019 when the Trump administration had perhaps the cruelest imaginable policies in place, family separation to try to deter people from coming, and they still came."

The Biden administration continued to emphasize on the Sunday talk shows that the U.S.-Mexico border "remains closed" and that the majority of adults are being turned away. But Psaki said the administration was not going to force children to go back on a treacherous journey.

"They are fleeing challenging economic circumstances, hurricanes, prosecution in some scenarios," she said. "It does not mean that they get to stay in the United States. It means their cases are adjudicated and we want to treat them humanely, make sure they are in a safe place while their cases are adjudicated. That's what we're talking about here."

Former President Donald Trump expanded and fortified border walls while championing "zero tolerance" policies that made it more difficult to seek U.S. asylum and led to some immigrant parents being separated from their children.

Under federal law, children arriving at the border without parents should be transferred within three days from U.S. Border Patrol custody to long-term facilities run by the U.S. Health and Human Services until they can be released to family members or sponsors.

Psaki said the administration is committed to transparency and providing access to those temporary Border Patrol facilities as soon as it can.

"We are mindful of the fact that we are in the middle of a pandemic. We want to keep these kids safe, keep the staff safe," Psaki said.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, called on the president to let the media accompany him to a temporary detention facility in Dallas on Monday.

"I again urge you to stop denying reality, confront the consequences of your policies, and allow the media access to these facilities," Cruz wrote in a letter.

Psaki and Graham spoke on "Fox News Sunday," while Bedingfield was interviewed on ABC's "This Week."

DEL RIO, Texas —

Marianela Rojas huddles in prayer with fellow migrants after trudging across a slow-flowing stretch of the Rio Grande and nearly collapsing when she stepped on American soil for the first time.

"I won't say it again," interrupts a U.S. Border Patrol agent, giving orders in Spanish for Rojas and a group of 14 other Venezuelans to get into a detention van. "Only passports and money in your hands. Everything else — earrings, chains, rings, watches — in your backpacks."

It's a frequent scene across the U.S.-Mexico border at a time of swelling migration. But these aren't farmers and low-wage workers from Mexico or Central America, who make up the bulk of those crossing. Among them are bankers, doctors and engineers from Venezuela, and they're arriving in record numbers as they flee turmoil in the country with the world's largest oil reserves and pandemic-induced pain across South America.

Two days after Rojas crossed, she left detention and got a bus out of the Texas town of Del Rio. The 54-year-old fled hardship in Venezuela a few years ago, leaving a paid-off home and career as an elementary school teacher for a fresh start in Ecuador.

But when the housecleaning work she found dried up, she decided to uproot again.

"It's over, it's all over," she said on the phone to loved ones. "Everything was perfect. I didn't stop moving for one second."

Last month, 7,484 Venezuelans were encountered by Border Patrol agents along the U.S.-Mexico border — more than all 14 years for which records exist. The surprise increase is a harbinger of a new type of migration that has caught the Biden administration off guard: pandemic refugees.

Many of the nearly 17,306 Venezuelans who have crossed the southern border illegally since January had been living for years in other South American countries, part of an exodus of millions since President Nicolás Maduro took power in 2013.

While some are government opponents, the vast majority are escaping long-running economic devastation marked by blackouts and shortages of food and medicine.

With the pandemic still raging in parts of South America, they relocated again. Increasingly, they're being joined at the U.S. border by people from the countries they initially fled to — like Ecuador and Brazil — as well as far-flung nations hit hard by the virus, like India and Uzbekistan.

Compared with other migrants, Venezuelans garner certain privileges — a reflection of their firmer financial standing, higher education levels and U.S. policies that have failed to remove Maduro but nonetheless made deportation all but impossible.

The vast majority enter the U.S. near Del Rio, a town of 35,000, and don't evade detention but turn themselves in to seek asylum.

Like many of the dozens of Venezuelans The Associated Press spoke to this month in Del Rio, 27-year-old Lis Briceno had already migrated once before. After graduating with a degree in petroleum engineering, she couldn't get hired in the oil fields near her hometown of Maracaibo without declaring her loyalty to Venezuela's socialist leadership. So she moved to Chile a few years ago, finding work with a technology company.

But as anti-government unrest and the pandemic tanked Chile's economy, her company shuttered. Briceno sold what she could to raise the $4,000 needed to get to the U.S.

"I always thought I'd come here on vacation, to visit the places you see in the movies," Briceno said. "But doing this? Never."

While Central Americans and others can spend months getting north, most Venezuelans reach the U.S. in as little as four days.

"This is a journey they're definitely prepared for from a financial standpoint," said Tiffany Burrow, who runs the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition's shelter in Del Rio, where migrants can eat, clean up and buy bus tickets to U.S. cities.

They first fly to Mexico City or Cancun. Smugglers promoting themselves as "travel agencies" on Facebook claim to offer hassle-free transport to the U.S. for about $3,000.

The steep price includes a guided sendoff from Ciudad Acuna, where the bulk of Venezuelans cross the Rio Grande and which had been largely spared the violence seen elsewhere on the border.

"If you're a smuggler in the business of moving a commodity — because that's how they view money, guns, people, drugs and everything they move, as a product — then you want to move it through the safest area possible charging the highest price," said Austin L. Skero II, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol's Del Rio sector.

Once in the U.S., Venezuelans tend to fare better than other groups. In March, Biden granted Temporary Protected Status to an estimated 320,000 Venezuelans, protecting them from deportation and allowing them to work legally.

Also, Venezuelans requesting asylum — as almost all do — tend to succeed, partly because the U.S. government corroborates reports of political repression. Only 26% of asylum requests from Venezuelans have been denied this year, compared with an 80% rejection rate for asylum-seekers from poorer, violence-plagued countries in Central America, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

"I can write their asylum requests almost by heart," said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration attorney in Harlingen, Texas, who has represented over 100 Venezuelans. "These are higher-educated people who can advocate for themselves and tell their story in a chronological, clean way that judges are accustomed to thinking."

Even Venezuelans facing deportation have hope. The Trump administration broke diplomatic relations with Maduro in 2019, so air travel is suspended, even charter flights, making removal next to impossible.

Briceno said that if she had stayed in Venezuela, she would earn the equivalent of $50 a month — barely enough to scrape by.

"The truth is," Briceno said, "it's better to wash toilets here than being an engineer over there."

SANTA TERESA, N.M. —

A border wall. Smugglers. Small children being dropped into America in the darkness.

A grainy video released Wednesday by authorities — its figures visible only in ghostly white outline, its stark storyline dramatic and obvious — captures, in mere seconds, the dangers for migrant children at the southern U.S. border.

A man straddling a 14-foot barrier near Santa Teresa, New Mexico, lowers a toddler while holding onto one arm. With the child dangling, he lets go. She lands on her feet, then falls forward face first into the dirt. The smuggler does the same thing with a slightly larger child, who falls on her feet and then her bottom. Then the smuggler and another man run off into the desert, deeper into Mexico.

The simple scene caught by a remote camera is an extreme case. But it embodies so much of the saga playing out on the border amid a spike in migrant arrivals, particularly children.

There is implied desperation — a family willing to subject their children to such risks in hopes of changing their future. There is the callousness of the smugglers handling kids like rag dolls.

And there is that barrier over which so many have fought — a symbol of American strength for some, a decidedly un-American thing altogether for others. A fence that, despite its height, is relatively easily overcome.

For immigrant advocates, scenes like this underscore why immigration laws need to be overhauled with a focus on unifying families and making legal immigration easier. For many opponents of such reform, scenes like this are confirmation that the nation's rule of law isn't being respected, that a reform of immigration policies could never even be contemplated while such things are happening. And Americans of all political stripes may debate what circumstances, if any, justify parents taking such actions.

While such debates happen, thousands of migrants from Mexico, Central America, and countries further south are arriving every day to the Mexico-U.S. border. Many are fleeing violence or other hardships in their home countries. Others are simply looking for better economic opportunities. They arrive by boat or wade through the Rio Grande River in Texas, or come on land into California, Arizona and New Mexico.

Many are children traveling alone. Border authorities encountered more than 9,000 children without a parent in February, the highest single month since May 2019, when 11,000 unaccompanied minors came to the border.

Unlike their parents in many situations, all unaccompanied minors are allowed to stay in the U.S. That dynamic has prompted many parents to either send kids on the journey to America alone, or get to the border and let them go the rest of the way. Most end up at least temporarily in shelters that are currently way beyond capacity.

Border authorities said the children caught on video were sisters, ages 3 and 5, and from Ecuador. They were found alert, taken to a hospital and cleared or any physical injuries. As of Thursday, they remained at a Border Patrol temporary holding facility pending placement by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department.

The girls’ mother is in the United States and authorities are in contact with her, Roger Maier, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told The Associated Press on Thursday. Maier couldn’t provide more details.

Many children arriving alone have relatives in the United States. If they are too young to remember names or phone numbers, as these girls likely were, they may come with contact information written down on paper or directly on their bodies. After being processed by the Border Patrol, they are transferred to Health and Human Services. Eventually they will be released to a sponsor, usually a parent or close relative.

The hope of those who send the children is that they will eventually be reunited with family in the U.S. But the risks to get to that point are enormous.

They can come from traveling without parents. They can come from the actual crossing, whether by river, crammed into a vehicle or on foot through the desert and traversing a wall; last year, a woman died after falling from a barrier in the Santa Teresa area where the girls were found. Finally, the risks can come from unscrupulous smugglers.

“People considering using the services of smugglers need to know that smugglers don’t have the kids’ best interest at heart. It’s entirely too dangerous,” said Maier, who added this about the girls being dropped: “Had it not been an area that was monitored, these children would have been fending for themselves.”

Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to the U.S.-Mexico border on Friday as part of the Biden administration's effort to limit migration from Central American countries into the U.S.

The White House confirmed that Harris will travel to El Paso, Texas Friday with Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas.

During the White House press briefing Wednesday, press secretary Jen Psaki said the trip was part of "the coordinated effort between her office, her work, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services" to address the causes of increased migration.

Psaki later said that Harris hadn't visited earlier because she "didn't want to visit a time when it would be disruptive to efforts on the ground."

Biden tapped Harris earlier this year to lead his administration's effort to contain the large increase of migrants who have been encountered at the border by U.S. officials.

As part of that effort, Harris traveled to Guatemala and Mexico earlier this month to meet with foreign leaders about the root causes of the migration. She did not visit the border during that trip, prompting criticism from Republicans.

Amid her trip, during an interview with NBC's Lester Holt, Harris compared visiting the border with visiting Europe.

"At some point, you know, we are going to the border," Harris said in the interview.

"We've been to the border. So this whole, this whole, this whole thing about the border. We've been to the border. We've been to the border," Harri said.

"You haven't been to the border," Holt responded.

"I, and I haven't been to Europe. And I mean, I don't — I don't understand the point that you're making," Harris said "I'm not discounting the importance of the border."

This story is breaking and will be updated.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas —

Video above: US reports record surge of migrant children

Paying a smuggler, Edgar Mejia could afford to take only one child with him to the United States. He chose his 3-year-old "warrior" son, leaving his 7- and 12-year-olds with their mother in Honduras.

"Pitifully, I had use him like a passport to get here," Mejia said last week after picking up milk from volunteers at a Brownsville, Texas, bus station for the last leg of their journey to join relatives in Atlanta. "I am here because of him."

Mejia, 32, and his son, who paid a smuggler $6,000 for a "new dream" that Honduras couldn't provide, are among the Border Patrol's nearly 170,000 encounters with migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border in March, a 20-year high. The total, announced Thursday, includes nearly 19,000 children traveling alone, the highest monthly number on record.

About four in 10 border encounters last month were with families and unaccompanied children — many from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — at a time when policies in the U.S. and Mexico favor them staying in the United States while they seek asylum. It marks the third sharp jump in Central American asylum-seekers in seven years.

For decades, predominantly Mexican men crossed the border illegally, with many returning for visits until heightened border security made going back and forth more difficult. Migration rose and fell but was fairly steady and predictable.

Over the last decade, a complex mix of factors has produced periodic, dramatic spikes, especially among families and children, who get more legal protections and require more care. The Government Accountability Office identified 10 potential causes for a spike in the number of unaccompanied children at the border in 2014, including poverty, violence and perceptions of U.S. immigration policy.

A large increase in family arrivals in 2019 followed an end to the Trump administration's practice of generally separating parents from their children at the border. The latest jump follows ferocious storms in Central America and President Joe Biden ending his predecessor's hardline immigration policies, though many changes attributed to Biden are rumors or have been fabricated by smugglers to generate business.

The "root causes" prompting Central Americans to leave haven't changed, said Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, whose temporary shelter has been hosting 400 to 500 people nightly, compared with a peak of about 1,000 in 2019.

"I think that it's simply that the traffickers use whatever is happening in the United States to extort the families, to lure them, to create a narrative that says, 'Come right now. The president is going to let you in,'" she said.

Migrants, in dozens of interviews over the last two weeks, generally said circumstances in Central America led them to the U.S. When asked about Biden, nearly all said his relatively pro-immigration positions influenced their thinking.

Smuggling fees vary widely, with some paying up to $10,000 a person in the Rio Grande Valley, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. There is often a discount for additional relatives. The trip can take weeks in cars, buses and trucks, ending when an inflatable raft reaches the banks of the Rio Grande and families and children turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.

Mejia said he and his son were in a group of 18 Hondurans on a trip divided into four parts, including one leg traveling in a trailer from Mexico City to Monterrey and a final stretch in an open-top boxcar to the border city of Reynosa. Children were told to be quiet when the trailer came to military checkpoints.

"(Smugglers) tell you it's going to go well, but the reality is different," Mejia said, turning to his 3-year-old son at the bus station in Brownsville, a border city of about 200,000 people on the Rio Grande. "I have a warrior here. We suffered greatly."

Douglas Perez, 24, said he stood with 10 people in a covered pickup truck, including his wife and two children, ages 4 and 1. He held the baby, planting his palm on the roof to avoid falling over. They were released in the U.S. with notices to report to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office.

Perez, who paid a smuggler $27,000 to bring his family to the U.S., said he left the western highlands of Guatemala because his job picking corn no longer provided enough food to eat.

Carlos Enrique Linga, who was released from custody with his 5-year-old daughter, said he could no longer afford new clothes for his family in Guatemala after rains destroyed their house. That prompted him to try to join a friend in Tennessee to earn money. His wife, 2-year-old twins and newborn stayed in Guatemala because they couldn't pay a smuggler.

"Our houses got carried away by the current, the water," Linga said after breakfast in a migrant shelter in Mission, Texas. "Our ranch is no more. We are without a house."

The Border Patrol had 168,195 encounters with migrants last month, the highest since March 2001. The numbers aren't directly comparable because more than half of those stopped last month had been quickly expelled from the country under federal pandemic-related powers that deny people the right to seek asylum. Being expelled carries no legal consequences, so many people make multiple attempts.

Biden has exempted unaccompanied children from expulsion, allowing them to stay in the U.S. while pursuing asylum claims and live with "sponsors," usually parents or close relatives.

Mexico has been reluctant to take back Central American families with young children, especially in Tamaulipas state bordering the Rio Grande Valley, so many of them are being released in the U.S. while their claims are considered by immigration authorities.

Migrants who enter the Rio Grande Valley as single adults or in families with children 7 and older are expelled to Reynosa, an organized-crime stronghold. Unfounded rumors are rampant in a plaza there where migrants plan their next move. Last week, rumors spread that the U.S. would open its borders April 5 or that the borders would be open for Biden's first 100 days in office.

Hermelindo Ak, a corn grower, heard in Guatemala that chances were better for families but didn't know how a child's age was considered. Information seemed to change "day to day," he said.

He was expelled with his 17-year-old son, then sent his son alone for a second attempt after learning unaccompanied children can stay in the U.S. Ak, 40, planned to return home to his wife and other children, who stayed in Guatemala because they couldn't afford to pay a smuggler.

CNN —

A 10-year-old boy found walking alone in tears near the U.S.-Mexico border had previously been expelled from the U.S. with his mother under a Trump-era pandemic health order that allows for the swift removal of migrants, according to a Customs and Border Protection official.

The child, identified as Wilton Gutiérrez of Nicaragua, had been traveling with his mother when they were apprehended in the El Paso, Texas, region on March 8, the official told CNN. They were expelled from El Paso to Mexico under the health order known as "Title 42," the official added.

The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to media.

The Washington Post first reported that the child and his mother had been expelled to Mexico.

On April 1, Wilton was found by U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas without his mother after a farmer spotted him and alerted authorities. "Can you help me?" the boy asked a Border Patrol agent in a video shared with CNN to underscore concerns over the danger associated with the increase in unaccompanied children at the border.

Monday marked the first time a U.S. official has acknowledged the expulsion to CNN and provided the date that Wilton and his mother had first been apprehended on the border. In Miami, the boy's uncle Misael Obregón said in an interview with Univision last week that the minor and his mother had come to the U.S. to request asylum but US authorities did not allow her to stay in the country.

The Biden administration has continued to lean on the Trump-era health order to quickly expel migrants amid the pandemic, with an exception for unaccompanied children, who are allowed to stay in the U.S. for their immigration proceedings.

CNN reported last week that "more and more" migrant families are "self-separating" in Mexico, sending children alone to cross into the United States after first having been expelled, according to the U.S. Border Patrol's chief patrol agent of the Rio Grande Valley sector, Brian Hastings — though that may not be the case here.

While the full circumstances of Wilton's journey were not immediately known, his back-and-forth shows the perils of a program meant to prevent further spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. and highlights the potential unintended consequences of it.

After he was picked up by Border Patrol, the child spent around a week in CBP custody, beyond the 72-hour legal limit, and then was transferred to Health and Human Services care on April 8, according to the official.

A spokesperson for HHS said, as a matter of policy, the department does not identify individual unaccompanied children and will not comment on specific cases. A CBP spokesperson did not have an update on the child's whereabouts or expulsion.

The average time in CBP custody for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley is around seven days, the official said, adding that some children have been held for up to 21 days.

As of Monday, there were 2,200 children in CBP custody in the south Texas region, which is ground zero for Border Patrol apprehensions and has struggled with the overwhelming number of children crossing the border.

Over the weekend, the Rio Grande Valley sector made some progress, transferring around 1,000 children from CBP to HHS custody, the official said.

HHS is "starting to move quicker as they get the additional facilities up and running," the official said.

The number of unaccompanied minors in CBP custody has dropped 45%, according to the latest government data, amid an ongoing effort by the Biden administration to find suitable spaces to accommodate them after facing scrutiny for overcrowded facilities.

Nicaragua said it had located the child's father in the municipality of Muelle de los Bueyes, CNN reported Saturday. He was identified as Lázaro Gutiérrez Laguna, a 35-year-old farmer.

According to police, Gutiérrez said his wife, 30-year-old Meylin Obregón, had traveled with his son to the United States on February 7. Gutiérrez said two brothers of his wife who are residents of the United States had financed the journey.

The father added that on April 7 he learned through the news that his son had been found by a U.S. border agent.

GUATEMALA CITY —

With Kamala Harris visiting Guatemala and Mexico on her first foreign trip as vice president, the Biden administration is expected to announce new measures to fight smuggling and trafficking, and hopes to announce additional anti-corruption efforts as well on Monday, a senior administration official said.

The official, who briefed reporters traveling with Harris on Sunday, spoke on condition of anonymity to preview announcements before they have been made public. No further details were provided.

Harris has been tasked by President Joe Biden with addressing the root causes of the spike in migration to the U.S.-Mexico border, and her aides say corruption will be a central focus of her meetings with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei on Monday and Mexico's Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on Tuesday.

"Corruption really does sap the the wealth of any country, and in Central America is at a scale where it is a large percentage of GDP across the region," said special envoy Ricardo Zuniga.

"We see corruption as one of the most important root causes to be dealt with," Zuniga added.

The trip got off to a rocky start when Harris' plane returned to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland about 30 minutes after takeoff because of what her spokesperson said was a problem with the landing gear. She departed on another plane and landed late Sunday in in Guatemala City, where she was met by Foreign Minister Pedro Brolo.

Harris is seeking to secure commitments from Guatemala and Mexico for greater cooperation on border security and economic investment, and aides say she will also discuss vaccine sharing during her meetings. But corruption in the region — a far more intractable challenge — will complicate her efforts.

It's already had a significant impact on her work in Central America. Harris has yet to engage substantively with the leaders of Honduras and El Salvador, who are both embroiled in corruption scandals.

Giammattei has faced criticism over corruption within his own government. Zuniga acknowledged that the U.S. government faces a challenge in working with him but argued Harris was in the country in part to have a direct conversation with the president about this and other issues.

"The best way to deal with these cases where you have a very complex relationship in a country like Guatemala is to talk clearly and plainly as partners, as countries that have to get along," he said.

Harris has laid out an approach centered on creating better opportunities and living conditions in the region through humanitarian and economic aid. She announced plans to send $310 million to provide support for refugees and address food shortages, and recently secured commitments from a dozen companies and organizations to invest in the Northern Triangle countries to promote economic opportunity and job training.

Washington won some goodwill through its vaccine diplomacy this past week. Giammattei and López Obrador both received calls from Harris on Thursday telling them the U.S. would be sending 500,000 doses and 1 million doses, respectively, of COVID-19 vaccine.

While in Guatemala, Harris also plans to meet community leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs. In Mexico, she will speak with female entrepreneurs and hold a roundtable with labor workers.

She's underscored the need to address corruption in public remarks and events. In a May meeting with a number of leading voices on Guatemala's justice system, she noted her work as a prosecutor and said that "injustice is a root cause of migration."

"Part of giving people hope is having a very specific commitment to rooting out corruption in the region," she said.

Harris has also raised the issue during virtual meetings with the leaders of both countries, and aides say she will do it again during meetings on her trip. During their past conversations, they have discussed areas of mutual interest — improving port security, fighting smuggling networks, going after corrupt actors — and the goal of this trip is to turn that talk into action, aides say.

While the vice president will make announcements concerning new efforts at cooperation and new programs, she's not expected to announce any new aid during her trip.

While in Latin America, Harris will also have to navigate the politics of immigration. Congressional Republicans have criticized both Biden and Harris for deciding not to visit the border, and contend the administration is ignoring what they say is a crisis there. April was the second-busiest month on record for unaccompanied children encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border, following March's all-time high. The Border Patrol's total encounters in April were up 3% from March, marking the highest level since April 2000.

Conservatives will be watching Harris closely for any missteps, hoping to drag her into further controversy on an issue that they see as a political winner.

In her efforts to win commitments on corruption from the region's leaders, Harris can point to a number of moves by the Biden administration last week.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized the problem during his own recent trip to Central America. The White House issued a memo elevating foreign corruption to a major national security issue, and directed all federal agencies to prioritize it and modernize their foreign corruption-fighting tools.

Eric Olson, director of policy at the Seattle International Foundation, which works to promote good governance in Central America, said that addressing corruption will take particular diplomatic skill. Harris will need to hold the leaders of Guatemala and Mexico accountable while also deepening trust and cooperation with the two nations.

"The challenge that she faces is how to, on the one hand, have a conversation, keep the door open — while not seeming to ignore the obvious elephant in the room, which is this incredible penetration of the state by corrupt actors," he said.

In Mexico, López Obrador continues to face a complicated security situation in many parts of the country. Nearly three-dozen candidates or pre-candidates were killed before this weekend’s midterm elections as drug cartels sought to protect their interests. The government’s inability to provide security in parts of the country is of interest to the U.S. in an immigration context, both for the people who are displaced by violence and the impact it has on a severely weakened economy trying reemerge from the pandemic.

The number of Mexicans encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection rose steadily from December through April. Mexico remains a key U.S. ally in trying to slow immigration, not only of its own citizens, but those crossing its territory. Successive U.S. administrations have effectively tried to push their immigration enforcement goals south to Mexico and Guatemala.

Nongovernmental organizations placed Guatemala's widespread corruption at the top of their list of concerns before Harris' visit.

Last month, two lawyers who are outspoken critics of Giammattei's administration were arrested on what they say were trumped-up charges aimed at silencing them.

The selection of judges for Guatemala's Constitutional Court, its highest, was mired in influence peddling and alleged corruption. Giammattei picked his chief of staff to fill one of the five vacancies. When Gloria Porras, a respected force against corruption, was elected to a second term, the congress controlled by Giammattei's party refused to seat her.

Harris' visit comes with high expectations, but experts say clear progress on corruption may be elusive.

"These are societies built on corruption," said Olson. "You're not gonna have an impact in six months."

___

Sherman reported from Mexico City. Associated Press writer Sonia Pérez D. in Guatemala City contributed to this report.