Arrests totaled 83,536 in June, down from 117,901 in May to mark the lowest tally since January 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.

A seven-day average of daily arrests fell more than half by the end of June from Biden’s announcement on June 4 that asylum processing would be halted when daily arrests reach 2,500, which they did immediately, said Troy Miller, acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner.

“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” Miller said.

Arrests had already fallen by more than half from a record high of 250,000 in December, largely a result of increased enforcement by Mexican authorities, according to U.S. officials.

Sharp declines registered across nationalities, including Mexicans, who have been most affected by the suspension of asylum, and Chinese people, who generally fly to Ecuador and travel to the U.S. border over land.

San Diego was the busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors bordering Mexico by number of arrests, followed by Tucson, Arizona.

More than 41,000 people entered legally through an online appointment app called CBP One in June. The agency said 680,500 people have successfully scheduled appointments since the app was introduced in January 2023.

Nearly 500,000 people from four countries entered on a policy to allow two-year stays on condition they have financial sponsors and arrive at an airport. They include 104,130 Cubans, 194,027 Haitians, 86,101 Nicaraguans and 110,541 Venezuelans, according to CBP.

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His wife tried to explain that her family had permission to go to the U.S. Instead, they flew her to Mexico’s southern border as part of a surge of enforcement actions that U.S. officials say have contributed to a sharp drop in illegal border crossings.

In addition to forcing migrants from trains, Mexico also resumed flying and busing them to the southern part of the country and started flying some home to Venezuela.

Even if temporary, the decrease in illegal crossings is welcome news for the White House. President Joe Biden’s administration is locked in talks with Senate negotiators over restricting asylum and $110 billion in aid for Ukraine and Israel hangs in the balance.

Bermudez said his wife became separated from her family when she talked to authorities as he gathered his stepchild and their belongings. He wanted to run, but his wife said they shouldn’t because they had followed procedure by making an appointment with U.S. immigration authorities.

“I told her, `Don’t trust them. Let’s go into the brush,’” Bermudez said, adding that other migrants had fled. He recalled her telling him, “Why are they sending us back if we have an appointment?”

Last week, Bermudez, his stepchild and two other relatives were waiting for her at a shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras as she took a bus back in hopes of still making the date.

Mexico’s immigration agency sent at least 22 flights from its border region with the U.S. to southern cities during the last 10 days of December, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data. Most were from Piedras Negras, which is across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.

Mexico also ran two removal flights to Venezuela with 329 migrants. The stretch was punctuated by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Mexico City on Dec. 28 to confront unprecedented crossings to the United States.

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said a financial shortfall that had led the immigration agency to suspend deportations and other operations was resolved. He did not offer details.

Arrests for illegal crossings into the U.S. from Mexico fell to about 2,500 on Monday, down from more than 10,000 on several days in December, according to U.S. authorities. In the Border Patrol’s busiest area, arrests totaled 13,800 during the seven-day period ending Friday, down 29% from 19,400 two weeks earlier, according to Tucson, Arizona, sector chief John Modlin.

The drop led U.S. Customs and Border Protection to reopen the port of entry in Lukeville, Arizona, on Thursday after a monthlong closure on the most direct route from Phoenix to its nearest beaches. The U.S. also restored operations at Eagle Pass and three other locations.

Merchants in Eagle Pass, a city of about 30,000 people, saw sales take “a major hit” while a bridge was closed to vehicle traffic so border agents could be reassigned to help process migrants, Maverick County Judge Ramsey English Cantu said.

“We survive pretty much from everything that comes from the Mexican side,” he said.

Last month, CBP resumed freight crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, after a five-day shutdown that U.S. officials said was a response to as many as 1,000 migrants riding atop a single train through Mexico before trying to walk across the border.

In Piedras Negras on Thursday, Casa del Migrante housed about 200 migrants, down from as high as 1,500 recently.

Among them was Manuel Rodriguez, 40, who said his family will miss their appointment to seek asylum that was made through the U.S. government’s CBP One app. He said the appointment was registered with his in-laws, who were deported to Venezuela after authorities boarded the bus they were riding.

“It was all under her name and she lost everything,” Rodriguez said.

Proposals being discussed by the White House and Senate negotiators include a new expulsion authority that would deny rights to seek asylum if illegal border crossings reach a certain threshold. Any such authority would almost certainly depend on Mexico’s willingness to take back non-Mexicans who enter the U.S illegally, something it does now on a limited scale.

Mexico’s support was critical to defunct Trump-era policies that forced 70,000 asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court and to deny rights to seek asylum during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., cautioned against overstating Mexico’s role in the recent drop in traffic. Panama reported that less than 25,000 migrants walked through the Darién jungle in December, about half of October’s level and a sign that fewer people are leaving South America for the U.S. Migration usually drops in December amid holidays and cold weather.

“The U.S. is able to lean on Mexico for a short-term enforcement effect on migration at the border, but the long-term effects are not always clear,” Selee said.

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The Democratic president has said he is willing to make “significant compromises on the border” as Republicans block the wartime aid in Congress. The White House is expected to get more involved in talks this week as the impasse over changes to border policy has deepened and the funds remaining for Ukraine have dwindled.

“It’s time to cut a deal that both sides can agree to,” Biden’s budget director, Shalanda Young, said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Republicans say the record numbers of migrants crossing the southern border pose a security threat because authorities cannot adequately screen all the migrants and that those who enter the United States are straining the country’s resources. GOP lawmakers also say they cannot justify to their constituents sending billions of dollars to other countries, even in a time of war, while failing to address the border at home.

Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, who is leading the negotiations, pointed to the surge of people entering the U.S. from Mexico and said “it is literally spiraling out of control.”

“All we’re trying to do is to say what tools are needed to be able to get this back in control, so we don’t have the chaos on our southern border,” Lankford said on CBS.

But many immigration advocates, including some Democrats, say some of the changes being proposed would gut protections for people who desperately need help and would not really ease the chaos at the border.

Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, the top Democratic bargainer, said the White House would take a more active role in the talks. But he also panned Republican policy demands so far as “unreasonable.”

“We don’t want to shut off the United States of America to people who are coming here to be rescued from dangerous, miserable circumstances, in which their life is in jeopardy. The best of America is that you can come here to be rescued from terror and torture,” Murphy said on NBC’s ”Meet the Press.”

Much of the negotiating is taking place in private, but some of the issues under discussion are known: asylum standards, humanitarian parole and fast-track deportation authority, among others.

A look at what they are and what might happen if there are changes:

HUMANITARIAN PAROLE
Using humanitarian parole, the U.S. government can let people into the country by essentially bypassing the regular immigration process. This power is supposed to be used on a case-by-case basis for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” Migrants are usually admitted for a pre-determined period and there’s no path toward U.S. citizenship.

Over the years, administrations, both Democratic and Republican, have used humanitarian parole to admit people into the U.S. and help groups of people from all over the world. It’s been used to admit people from Hungary in the 1950s, from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos during the latter half of the 1970s, and Iraqi Kurds who had worked with the U.S. in the mid-1990s, according to research by the Cato Institute.

Under Biden, the U.S. has relied heavily on humanitarian parole. The U.S. airlifted nearly 80,000 Afghans from Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and brought them to the U.S. after the Taliban takeover. The U.S. has admitted tens of thousands of Ukrainians who fled after the Russian invasion.

In January the Democratic administration announced a plan to admit 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela via humanitarian parole, provided those migrants had a financial sponsor and flew to the U.S. instead of going to the U.S.-Mexico border for entry.

The latest U.S. government figures show that nearly 270,000 people had been admitted into the country through October under that program. Separately, 324,000 people have gotten appointments through a mobile app called CBP One that is used to grant parole to people at land crossings with Mexico.

Republicans have described the programs as essentially an end run around Congress by letting in large numbers of people who otherwise would have no path to be admitted. Texas sued the administration to stop the program aimed at Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

WHAT MIGHT CHANGE WITH ASYLUM?
Asylum is a type of protection that allows a migrant to stay in the U..S. and have a path to American citizenship. To qualify for asylum, someone has to demonstrate fear of persecution back home due to a fairly specific set of criteria: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinions. Asylum-seekers must be on U.S. soil when they ask for this protection.

They generally go through an initial screening called a credible fear interview. If they are determined to have a chance of getting asylum, they are allowed to stay in the U.S. to pursue their case in immigration court. That process can take years. In the meantime, asylum-seekers can start to work, get married, have children and create a life.

Critics say the problem is that most people do not end up getting asylum when their case finally makes it to immigration court. But they say migrants know that if they claim asylum, they essentially will be allowed to stay in America for years.

“People aren’t necessarily coming to apply for asylum as much to access that asylum adjudication process,” said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration court judge and fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for less immigration in the U.S.

Some of what lawmakers are discussing would raise the bar that migrants need to meet during that initial credible fear interview. Those who do not meet it would be sent home.

But Paul Schmidt, a retired immigration court judge who blogs about immigration court issues, said the credible fear interview was never intended to be so tough. Migrants are doing the interview soon after arriving at the border from an often arduous and traumatizing journey, he said. Schmidt said the interview is more of an “initial screening” to weed out those with frivolous asylum claims.

Schmidt also questioned the argument that most migrants fail their final asylum screening. He said some immigration judges apply overly restrictive standards and that the system is so backlogged that it is hard to know exactly what the most recent and reliable statistics are.

WHAT IS EXPEDITED REMOVAL?
Expedited removal, created in 1996 by Congress, basically allows low-level immigration officers, as opposed to an immigration judge, to quickly deport certain immigrants. It was not widely used until 2004 and generally has been used to deport people apprehended within 100 miles of the Mexican or Canadian border and within two weeks of their arrival.

Defenders say it relieves the burden on the backlogged immigration courts. Immigration advocates say its use is prone to errors and does not give migrants enough protections, such as having a lawyer help them argue their case. As president, Republican Donald Trump pushed to expand this fast-track deportation policy nationwide and for longer periods of time. Opponents sued and that expansion never happened.

WHAT MIGHT THESE CHANGES DO?
Much of the disagreement over these proposed changes comes down to whether people think deterrence works.

Arthur, the former immigration court judge, thinks it does. He said changes to the credible fear asylum standards and restrictions on the use of humanitarian parole would be a “game changer.” He said it would be a “costly endeavor” as the government would have to detain and deport many more migrants than today. But, he argued, eventually the numbers of people arriving would drop.

But others, like Schmidt, the retired immigration court judge, say migrants are so desperate, they will come anyway and make dangerous journeys to evade Border Patrol.

“Desperate people do desperate things,” he said.

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But nothing ever became law and in the time since, Washington’s center of gravity on immigration has shifted demonstrably to the right, with the debate now focused on measures meant to keep migrants out as Republicans sense they have the political upper hand.

Long gone are the chatter and horse-trading between parties over how to secure a pathway to citizenship for immigrants, or a modernized work permit system to encourage more legal migration. Instead, the fights of late have centered on how much to tighten asylum laws and restrain a president’s traditional powers to protect certain groups of migrants.

Now, Democrats and Republicans are again struggling to strike an immigration deal — and the consequences of failure stretch far beyond the southern border. Congressional Republicans are insisting on tougher border measures as their price for greenlighting billions in additional aid to Ukraine, and the stalemate is putting the future of U.S. military assistance to Kyiv at risk as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nears the two-year mark.

Democrats have “ceded the ground to Republicans on immigration and the border,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a nonprofit that advocates for immigrant rights. “The administration seems to see no advantage in leading on this issue, but I think that they’re shooting themselves in the foot.”

The intractable nature of immigration debates is coming into sharp relief this week as a bipartisan group of senators tasked with finding a border deal is running out of time to reach an agreement. The Senate on Wednesday failed to advance a nearly $106 billion emergency spending request from Biden to cover national security needs including Ukraine, Israel and the border. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is an unwavering backer of Ukraine yet has stressed privately to President Joe Biden that the administration will need to bend on border policy to unlock that money.

In remarks at the White House on Wednesday, Biden made it clear that he was prepared to agree to at least some of the changes Republicans are seeking.

“I am willing to make significant compromises on the border,” he said. “We need to fix the broken border system. It is broken.”

Behind closed doors, Democrats have resisted demands from Republicans to scale back Biden’s executive powers to temporarily admit certain migrants into the country. Yet Democrats privately appear willing to concede to GOP negotiators in other areas, particularly on making it tougher for asylum-seekers to clear an initial bar before their legal proceedings can continue in the United States.

That’s a shift in favor of Republicans from even last year: There were similar agreements around asylum among Senate negotiators back then, but that would have been in exchange for a conditional pathway to citizenship for roughly 2 million “Dreamers” who came to the United States illegally as children.

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., a perennial negotiator on immigration, stressed that in “every Congress, the foundation for compromise changes.”

“The Democrats have to understand we lead one of the two chambers on Capitol Hill,” Tillis said. “They have to understand that we rightfully will get something more conservative than some of the deals that are negotiated in the last Congress.”

Throughout the Senate border negotiations, the White House has remained visibly hands off, largely trying to replicate its strategy on previously successful legislative talks like those that eventually led to tougher gun restrictions becoming law.

But it’s also no secret the border is one issue Biden would prefer to avoid.

Though Biden as vice president spearheaded the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts in Central America, the border specifically is one of the few issues that he did not manage during his 36 years in the Senate nor two terms as vice president.

As president, Biden’s aim has been to adopt a foreign policy approach to the border, framing the issue as a hemispheric challenge, not solely a U.S. problem. Biden almost immediately after taking office unraveled some of former President Donald Trump’s more hardline policies. And last year, he oversaw the end of Title 42, the pandemic-era health restrictions at the border that had made it easier to deny migrants entry into the U.S.

He has tried to broaden legal pathways while cracking down on illegal border crossings. But the number of migrants at the border, after an initial dip following the end of Title 42, has been climbing dramatically. Now, cities like Chicago, New York and Denver are struggling to manage the migrants who have been relocated to their cities, forcing Democrats in areas far north to confront similar challenges to those long faced by border states.

Inside the White House, deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian — tapped initially to oversee implementation of Biden’s signature laws, like the massive infrastructure package that just turned two years old — is now coordinating the administration’s response to Democratic-led cities and states that have asked for help managing the influx of migrants.

“There is a fundamental shift in the Democratic Party on immigration” that has happened within the past six months, as the number of migrants in those cities has swelled, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow and director of the Migration Policy Institute office at New York University’s law school.

Before, Democrats would bristle at any potential discussion over the border, particularly following Trump. But Chishti added: “That’s no longer true. Their backs don’t go up when they see someone saying we want to make some changes in the policies at the border.”

Aides and allies to Biden have said the president is willing to accept new restrictions on asylum and potentially other Republican-led immigration policy changes, particularly as the numbers at the border continue to rise. His supplemental funding request, which seeks $14 billion for the border, would hire more asylum officers, increase detention capacity for migrant families and hire more immigration court judges.

There’s now a backlog of more than 1 million cases, and it’s only increasing. Some migrants are released into the U.S. and wait for years before they are told whether they qualify for asylum.

Arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border in August through October more than doubled over the previous three months as migrants and smugglers adjusted to new asylum regulations following the end of Title 42. Illegal border crossings were at 188,778 in October, down from 218,763 in September, which was the second-highest month on record.

The White House decision to lump additional funding for the border in with Ukraine assistance has given lawmakers, Republicans say, an implicit nod to negotiate policy changes that would otherwise make Democrats feel uncomfortable.

“The fact that they are trying to actually work and figure out what we can do to come up with border security tells me he understands the American people are getting fed up with their current posture,” Tillis said of Biden and the White House.

Bolstering the GOP posture even further is a new House Republican majority that is largely resistant to continued Ukraine assistance, making the price of additional aid for the White House that much higher.

And unlike the successful gun talks last year — when Democrats wielded political advantage after mass shootings galvanized public calls for increased restrictions — immigration is largely seen as an issue that is being fought on Republicans’ turf.

But in the Democrats’ view, Trump and his hard-line immigration policies, coupled with antipathy toward Ukraine aid, continue to loom large, rendering Republicans unable to close any deal that would involve irking portion of their base that remain staunchly opposed to Ukraine aid and anything less than the hard-line policies they’ve already laid out.

Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., one of the chief authors of the 2013 immigration bill that never became law, said the U.S. immigration system, writ large, still needs an overhaul.

But “we can’t do that right now in the context of this Ukraine bill,” he said. “It’s too complicated. It’s too far reaching. And frankly, there’s no reason to be attaching the border to Ukraine funding.”

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Some try to drive as little as possible and make fewer trips to the supermarket. Others no longer take their children to the park and worry about allowing them to attend school. Others still are hiding out — avoiding travel to other states, not getting regular medical check-ups, or closing their businesses and leaving town. And many are just on high alert — all because of a new immigration law Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in May.

One of the strictest in the nation, the law criminalized transporting immigrants lacking permanent legal status into the state, invalidated any U.S. government identification they might have and blocked local governments from providing them with ID cards. Florida hospitals that receive Medicaid are now mandated to ask patients about immigration status and businesses employing 25 or more people must verify their workers’ legal status.

Other aspects of the law go into effect next year.

DeSantis, who is running for president, signed the bill in hopes of appealing to conservative voters and has criticized President Joe Biden’s administration for the massive influx of migrants at the southern border.

“You have a duty to ensure that these borders are secure,” DeSantis said at the time, signing the law a day before federal immigration rules enacted during the pandemic ended.

Since then, Associated Press interviews with a dozen immigrants found that daily routines have been upended for fear of being detained, separated from their families and deported.

For one woman who asked not to be identified for fear of being detained, the change in the law has left her feeling like she traded one world of fear for another.

“I imagined that we were coming to the U.S. to have a better life, to be calmer, but that was not the case,” she said. “There is always the fear that something could happen to us.”

The 31-year-old single mother of four fled the violence of Honduras for the safety of the U.S. two years ago. Upon arrival, she sought asylum and worked as a house painter to support her daughters and her mother, who still lacks permanent legal status after crossing into the U.S. illegally six years ago.

Before the new law passed, the woman says her mother helped out by driving her grandchildren to school. Now, she is afraid police will ask her to show a driver’s license and detain and deport her for not having one.

“She tries not to go out too much; she is being be very careful,” she said.

The new law also cost the woman her painting job.

She says her employer — a Salvadoran man also without permanent legal status — abruptly closed his business and left the state. Though she found another job, she worries about supporting her family — she doesn’t have the economic resources to move elsewhere.

Florida is home to about 4.6 million people that are foreign-born, and nearly three-quarters are from Latin America and the Caribbean. At least 825,000 lack permanent legal status, according to the most recent Pew Research Center survey from 2017. And about half of those people contribute to Florida’s workforce and economy in key industries including agriculture, construction, hospitality and more, according to the American Business Immigration Coalition.

“(The law) is impacting their ability to just go about their day like they used to,” said Shalyn Fluharty, an immigration attorney and executive director of the nonprofit law firm American for Immigrant Justice.

Experts like Fluharty characterize the law as vague and confusing, asserting that it raises concerns of mandatory detention, arrests and felony convictions for individuals who have no way of knowing they could be a target, including U.S. citizens who may be transporting immigrants without permanent legal status into the state.

“Whether or not you should be afraid really kind of depends on your unique, individualized, factual circumstances,” Fluharty said. Her advice: If you are afraid, consult with a lawyer.

But not everyone can contact a lawyer.

Many have simply changed their way of living — even families of mixed legal status, with some members being U.S. citizens and others without permanent legal status.

Salvador Rosas, a 22-year-old college student, was born in central Florida along with his two brothers. While Rosas and his siblings are U.S. citizens, other family members are not. Their parents, who came to the state in 1999 after leaving Mexico, and their grandmother are living in the country illegally.

Before the new law passed, the family used to drive to Chicago once or twice a year to visit Rosas’ grandmother. Now, with fears of being detained and separated, Rosas’ parents and grandmother have mutually canceled all travel plans — even with 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) between them.

“That’s very hard already,” he said.

Rosas’ mother has lived many years separated from her family in Mexico, and “now, it is going to be like a separation between states,” he said.

Despite being a U.S. citizen, Rosas himself fears being detained while traveling and returning to Florida.

Rosas’ and others’ fears are not unfounded — authorities are already enforcing the law.

A Mexican man who arrived in Florida a year ago was arrested last month while returning from a work trip to Georgia. The Mexican consulate told the AP that the man was stopped by police for driving a van with window tints that appeared darker than the legal limit.

He was arrested and later charged with not having a valid driver’s license and multiple counts of smuggling “illegal individuals” into the state, according a Florida Highway Patrol report and court documents. A police report showed that six other people were in the vehicle with the man, including a minor.

The man’s arrest echoes the experience of another immigrant who spoke with the AP.

A 45-year-old Mexican man, who asked not be identified for fear of being deported, said a routine traffic stop in 2011 led to a monthlong detention and his later deportation for not having a driver’s license.

His wife was pregnant at the time and although he reunited with his family after crossing the border illegally five months later, he missed the birth of his second child.

After Florida’s law passed, he moved 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) northwest to Wisconsin with his wife and three children after the law passed. The move was worth it. He said he feels “comfortable, calm, more confident” in the Midwest state — a far cry from Florida, where he felt “anxious, pressured and afraid of any police.”

“I’m not going to leave my family alone,” he said. “I’ve been through that once.”

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“We strive to encourage those well-intentioned lawmakers who are seeking to enact effective and humane border management as part of a framework of comprehensive immigration reforms,” said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in an address at the start of the bishops’ spring gathering.

He called on fellow Catholics to continue aid to immigrants. “We cannot fail to see the face of Christ in all of those who need our assistance, especially the poor and the vulnerable,” said Broglio, who heads the Archdiocese for Military Services. “I know that this can put us at odds with certain groups or those who fear immigration. But our commitment is to the … dignity of the human person from conception to natural death.”

Broglio voiced skepticism about the trend of some governors shipping migrants elsewhere — typically from red to blue states amid a wider ideological clash over how to respond to asylum seekers and other migrants.

“If they’re transporting them to make a statement, then that seems to me to be problematic,” Broglio said when asked about the issue at a news conference. “If they’re transporting them, because those other states might be better able to respond to the immediate needs, well then that might be a way of responding to the problem. However, I suspect that it’s more to make a statement.”

Earlier this month, El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz voiced similar criticism after Florida state workers recruited migrants outside a Catholic church for a tax-funded flight to California, with promises of jobs and housing, a Catholic official said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, has taken credit for such flights.

The bishops have a relatively light agenda for the two-day public portion of their meeting, concluding Friday, at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate. Typically they have a heavier agenda in the fall.

Bishops are slated to vote Friday on whether to begin revisions to the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services — which guides the widespread network of Catholic hospitals and other health institutions on what they should and should not do. Although the agenda doesn’t give a reason for the revisions, the meeting comes three months after bishops issued doctrinal guidelines opposing gender transition care in Catholic hospitals.

They heard reports about the ongoing “synodal” process convened by Pope Francis — an unprecedented two-year canvassing of the lay Catholic faithful worldwide about their vision for the church and how it can better respond to the needs of Catholics today. Reports on those dialogues are being gathered for an October meeting of bishops in Rome.

Archbishop Christophe Pierre, the Vatican nuncio or ambassador to the U.S., said the process echoes Pope Francis’ goal of getting beyond ideology. “When we engage with people’s real experiences — as ‘messy’ as that reality may be — we give them hope because they realize that Christ is willing to be with them no matter where they are on their journey,” Pierre said.

The bishops also heard a progress report on plans for a nationwide gathering in Indianapolis in July 2024 focused on devotion to the Eucharist — the communion celebration at the heart of Catholic worship. Local groups have held discussions and worship activities in preparation for the event, which will be preceded by three multi-state pilgrimages converging on Indianapolis from different routes, said Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, who chairs the bishops’ advisory group to the gathering.

On another matter, Broglio expressed solidarity with Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez in dismay over the Los Angeles Dodgers’ honoring the satirical group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence for its charitable work in a Pride Night event Friday. Catholic bishops say the group, which dresses extravagantly as nuns, is blasphemous and reminiscent of past anti-Catholic bigotry.

“The disrespect for the truths and traditions of our faith, for the legendary commitment of religious women to building up society, and the tarnishing of what has so often been called the national sport harkens back to the ‘know nothings’ of the 19th century,” Broglio said.

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“The only thing that gave me strength is the Lord. I’m not going to lose my faith, whatever I might go through,” she said later, sitting on a mattress in one of Iglesia Rescate’s classrooms. She and her children, ages 16, 8 and 3, have been sleeping in the church’s improvised shelter since the promises of help made by her contact in the United States turned out to be “all lies.”

In the past 18 months, an estimated 250,000 migrants and asylum-seekers like Tamayo have arrived in the Miami area after being granted only precarious legal status. It often doesn’t include permission to work, which is essential to building new lives in the U.S.

The influx is maxing out the migrant social safety net even in Miami’s faith communities, which are long accustomed to integrating those escaping political persecution, a lack of freedoms and a dearth of basic necessities. Cubans were the first to arrive during the island’s communist revolution 60 years ago, and they’re still fleeing here alongside Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans.

“The Lord says to welcome the stranger. It’s the saddest thing, the quantity of people who come and we can’t help them,” said the Rev. David Monduy, Iglesia Rescate’s senior pastor, who came from Cuba more than a decade ago.

Miami’s faith leaders and their congregations remain steadfast in their mission to help settle new migrants. But they’re sounding the alarm that the need is growing unmanageable – and could get worse without federal reforms providing permanent legal status and work permits.

“We can get a call on a Saturday that 30 migrants were dropped off, and two hours later all have been picked up,” said Peter Routsis-Arroyo, the CEO of Catholic Charities in Miami. “But the challenge is at what point you reach saturation.”

The number of arrivals, by sea directly to Florida and from those heading here from the US-Mexico border, surged earlier this winter. A temporary humanitarian parole program aimed at preventing illegal border crossings is expected to bring even more people, because it applies to the four countries with large diasporas already in Miami.

For most newcomers, the best hope to settle in the U.S. is to win asylum, but immigration courts are so backlogged migrants can be in limbo for years, ineligible to get a job legally. Advocates say that makes them vulnerable to criminals, puts an impossible financial burden on existing migrant communities that try to help, and slows down integration into U.S. society.

“It’s completely irrational that they’re not giving out work permits,” said Miami Archbishop Thomas Wenski, whose Catholic archdiocese has long helped welcome migrants. “Because of that, the government can make a situation that’s not too bad yet, become worse.”

Many migrants are homeless due to soaring rent and motel rates. Faith leaders say some are paying $800 a month for an inflatable mattress in a living room or staying in a single-family home with more than a dozen relatives.

“Every day, people knock on the doors of our parishes, saying they have no place to sleep,” said the Rev. Marcos Somarriba, rector at St. Agatha Catholic Church on Miami’s outskirts, who came to Florida more than 40 years ago as a teen fleeing Nicaragua.

In addition to providing food, clothes and some housing relief, Somarriba’s and other churches are helping educate migrants about their legal options. At St. Agatha, a recent informational event about asylum drew 500 people.

St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church, a few miles away, put together a migration forum with Catholic Legal Services in mid-February. Three dozen people listened intently as attorneys explained the new humanitarian parole program that allows 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans into the U.S. each month if they have a sponsor who assumes financial responsibility for them for two years.

Parishioner Dalia Marrero attended to learn about sponsoring an uncle having “political problems” in Nicaragua, where many are fleeing President Daniel Ortega’s crackdown on opponents.

“I don’t want to fail him or U.S. law,” she said, worried about how long she’d be required to support her relative.

Another Nicaraguan migrant, Ileana Luna, nodded in agreement. Her niece wants to come to the U.S., but with two children and exorbitant rent, Luna can’t afford to be her sponsor.

“Simply, when you can’t, you can’t,” she said.

At a pork and rice weekly dinner cooked by the parents of Iglesia Rescate’s pastor, three Cuban men who arrived in recent months voiced similar concerns about how harsh the reality is, even as they remain determined to get settled and bring their families after they get legal status.

“Nobody tells you the bad (side),” said Randy Smith, who was a doctor in Cuba.

Miami’s established diaspora communities know all too well the hardships that migrating entails, and that motivates many to help. But there also is mistrust among some old timers who remain active in opposition to autocratic regimes like Cuba’s and view some new arrivals’ politics with suspicion, said Jorge Duany, director of the Cuban Research Institute at Florida International University.

That underscores the potentially crucial role for faith leaders — to preach forgiveness and build a sense of shared experience.

“That’s it — to unite,” said the Rev. Elvis González, pastor at St. Michael the Archangel, a historically Cuban church that welcomes faithful from across Central America. “They have seen the church as the only institution that can give some hope.”

A few miles south on the seashore stands La Ermita, a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Charity that’s long been a beacon for Cuban exiles. It’s one of the first stops for many migrants from across the region, said its rector, the Rev. José Espino, who at 5 years old was one of the thousands of children sent to the United States after the Cuban revolution.

Migrants come to bring sunflowers to the Virgin, to cry in gratitude for having made it and to ask for help with food and clothing, said Sister Consuelo Gómez.

“Jesus also was a migrant,” said Gómez, who helps many newcomers find jobs and decent housing, often with the aid of diaspora members. “We try to help so that they can get ahead on their own.”

Among them was Rognierys Señaris Brito, a Cuban who volunteers at the shrine on her breaks from working as housekeeper for a woman who fled the island ahead of Fidel Castro’s takeover.

Last year, Señaris’ brother, a father of two, also arrived, after a long, traumatic journey up Central America where he saw fellow migrants die.

“The first thing he did was come here,” Señaris said at a recent Mass at the shrine.

Two Venezuelan sisters also showed up at the Ermita, the youngest clutching a little Virgin medal she credited with safe passage. With a spontaneous donation from a family who noticed them at Mass, Gómez helped the young women get their own place as well as jobs that allow them to send money back to their ailing mother.

“Here I motivate myself, even though, yes, I miss my family,” said older sister, Daniela Valletero, who works two jobs, six days a week. “Here I feel that I’ll make it.”

That’s the kind of faith that motivates Marylin Rondon, an attorney originally from Venezuela whose weekly prayer group of professionals from Latin America prepares hundreds of sandwiches for the nuns to distribute to migrants and the homeless.

On a recent evening at her house, they prayed the rosary as they briskly apportioned bologna and cheese.

“As a Catholic, you can’t stop at sadness,” Rondon said. “The biggest faith is that of the one who is arriving. He has to depend 100% on providence.”

Outside the Ermita shrine, a couple stood under the palms, their homeland of Cuba some 200 miles across the sea. Roberto Sardiñas came seven years ago through the Mexico border, and in December managed to get his wife, Dadiana Figueroa, to immigrate legally through family reunification.

Asked about the influx of new arrivals, Sardiñas said it would be selfish to argue anything but that “all who can come, let them come.”

“The ideal would be that freedom existed in Cuba,” Figueroa added, staring at the ocean.

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Miami faith community strains to help new exiles, migrants

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The GOP’s dominance of Florida’s 27th congressional district is emblematic of the party’s inroads with Latino voters in recent years in much of the U.S. and especially in Florida. Those gains helped Gov. Ron DeSantis decisively win reelection last year and contributed to the GOP taking back control of the U.S. House.

That strong showing, however, is leading to some tension as the newly emboldened Republicans in Washington aim to launch an aggressive agenda, particularly around immigration policy. Salazar is among a handful of Republicans pushing back against a sweeping proposal being considered in the House that would restrict asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

“We understand that immigrants want to come and live in the promised land,” Salazar said in a recent interview. “Orderly legal immigration is good for the country and good for District 27.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas, a Mexican American Republican whose district covers a long portion of the U.S-Mexico border from El Paso to San Antonio, has been even bolder, calling the legislation “anti-immigrant.”

The dissent highlights a challenge for the GOP. The party’s future may well depend on broadening its appeal beyond an aging, predominantly white base of support. And while some conservative Latinos support hard-line immigration policies, there’s a risk that the GOP could repel other persuadable Latinos by moving too far to the right on the issue.

Democrats also face political challenges on this front. The Biden administration recently proposed a measure that would impose severe limitations on asylum, arguing that surging numbers of migrants left them little choice. The push will almost certainly be challenged in court and has prompted criticism from progressives.

Republicans have long earned support from roughly a third of Latino voters, many of whom share the party’s conservative attitudes on immigration and other issues. In November’s elections, 39% of Latinos voted for Republicans, according to AP VoteCast. That was an uptick from 32% supporting Republicans in 2018’s midterm elections.

Overall, about a third of Latino voters were in favor of increasing law enforcement at the U.S.-Mexico border, while two-thirds were opposed. About half said they disapproved of the way President Joe Biden was handling border security.

Majorities of Latino voters who supported Republicans disapproved of Biden on border security and were in favor of increased enforcement at the border.

For Republicans, Donald Trump, the former president who is again seeking the White House, may have given the party something of a path on how to navigate the politics of immigration. During his previous campaigns and while he was in office, Trump embraced a crackdown on asylum rules. But he also spoke of toughening border security and building a wall. None of his actions cost him Latino support during his two elections.

“Many conservatives felt emboldened by Trump’s performance, by the idea that a Republican could be both anti-immigrant and win Latino voters,” said Geraldo Cadava, a professor of history and Latino studies at Northwestern University and author of “The Hispanic Republican: The Shaping of an American Political Identity, from Nixon to Trump.”

The immigration bill introduced by U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, would require U.S. officials to automatically ban or detain asylum seekers while their claims are being considered. Right now, asylum seekers can be released with notices to appear in court and fight for asylum. The bill would also allow U.S. immigration officials to ban all migrants from entering if there is no “operational control” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Roy sent a letter to his GOP colleagues last week asking them to back the bill. In an interview, he said he found it “absurd” for Gonzales and Salazar to question the bill.

“A few of my Republican colleagues prefer to be fiddling while America burns,” Roy said. “Republicans are going to have to put their money where their mouth is.”

Salazar, who was backed by Trump and DeSantis, has been vocal about both the need to secure the border and the need to push for an immigration overhaul that gives some status to those who are already in the country illegally. She said she and her colleagues are simply working together to make sure the proposal does not violate any laws governing asylum.

“The formula hasn’t changed,” Salazar said. “We want the Albert Einsteins of the world to come and work for us and continue to make this economy strong.”

This issue is of particular importance in her district, she said. Massive protests that erupted in Cuba in July 2021 and the government’s response to them have played a role in a more recent exodus of Cubans. Cubans are fleeing their homes in the largest numbers in six decades to escape economic and political turmoil. Most fly to Nicaragua as tourists and slowly make their way to the U.S. via Mexico.

“I do know that my district appreciates what I am saying,” Salazar said.

Some Democrats have pointed to Salazar’s comments to support their opposition to Roy’s legislation. U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., recently showed a poster board at a border security hearing featuring a quote from Salazar: “Are we stupid? Come on. This country was based on good minds. Look at Albert Einstein. We gave him a piece of paper to come in.”

Einstein arrived in the U.S. in 1933 as a refugee of Nazi Germany.

“Listen to your own colleagues, who know better about this than you,” Swalwell told fellow lawmakers.

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Latino Republicans push back on party’s immigration agenda
 

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The Central American “coyotes” squinted back, trying to find the people they would smuggle to the United States. These were the first steps that 19-year-old Merlyn and 24-year-old Melanie took outside of Cuba. Toting two small backpacks and Melanie’s 1-year-old daughter, the women realized just how alone they were.

Their odyssey of more than 4,200 miles (6,000 kilometers) would lead the medical students to question their past lives, race unknowingly against a ticking legal clock and leave them teetering on the edge of death as they tumbled down a cliff.

The sisters’ voyage is one that hundreds of thousands of Cubans have made over the last two years in a historic wave of migration, fueled by a crisis in the island’s already-troubled economy sparked in large part by the pandemic and one of the world’s highest rates of inflation.

The exodus prompted a January Biden administration measure to cut back on Cuban migrants, whom the U.S. had historically welcomed even as it turned away Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans and people from other Latin American and Caribbean nations.

The Rolo González sisters, like other Cuban migrants, lost hope for the future in their country. Their optimism rested in the hazy prospect of life in the U.S. and a brighter future for the little girl who would have no memories of the island.

“All you know is that you’re going to a foreign country where you’ve never been, to put your life in the hands of people you’ve never met, to another place you don’t know,” said the younger sister. “You have your destination, but you don’t know what awaits you on your journey.”

Over the past two years, American authorities have detained Cubans nearly 300,000 times on the border with Mexico. Some have been sent back but the vast majority have stayed under immigration rules dating to the Cold War. That’s more than half the population of Baltimore or nearly 3% of the people in Cuba.

While they had trained as doctors, the Rolo González sisters spent their free time on the outskirts of Havana scraping together enough to buy basics like baby formula for Melanie’s daughter.

The women once dreamed of traveling as doctors but they quickly grew disillusioned about life in Cuba due to frequent blackouts, medical supply shortages and other restrictions.

When Melanie’s daughter, Madisson, was born, she and her economist husband began to discuss their family migrating to the U.S. He would go first, they decided, and then they would seek to migrate through legal, less dangerous routes.

In May 2022, he flew to Nicaragua. Shortly after, Melanie said, he left her for another woman.

She still planned to migrate, though, now with her little sister.

The vast majority of Cuban migrants over the last year have flown to Nicaragua – where Cubans don’t need a visa – and head overland to Mexico. A growing number also take a dangerous route by sea, traveling on packed, precariously constructed boats almost 100 miles (161 kilometers) to Florida.

The sisters sold a house left to them by their father, along with the refrigerator, television and anything else of value in exchange for American dollars. With money from friends and family in Florida, they had $20,000.

It bought the Rolo González sisters flights to Nicaragua and passage overland to the U.S. border with one of the smuggling networks.

They took leave from medical school and told only five close friends and family that they were going.

Days before their flight, the two meticulously sorted through stacks of medicine, winter clothes and powdered baby milk ⁠— as much of their lives as they could fit into two blue-and-pink backpacks.

The sisters, like many other Cubans, were counting on the relative but soon-to-disappear ease with which Cuban migrants could enter the U.S.

Just after midnight on Dec. 13, the Rolo González sisters walked past a hallway lined with family photos and out of their home potentially forever.

The last thing they told their mother before leaving her standing alone in the Havana airport was “I love you.”

“Until then, it seemed unreal to me,” said the younger sister. “When I saw myself sitting there on the plane, the only thing I thought about was what we had achieved. When the plane took off, we looked at each other and said ‘We’re free.’”

They walked out of the Nicaragua airport with a smuggler who had a picture of them on his phone and received instructions via WhatsApp.

It was time to make the first payment: $3,600 in cash.

Their “guide” was a vague, but constant presence, sending them messages with instructions as they were handed off from smuggler to smuggler.

Once they paid, they began a 12-hour drive with the “coyote,” arriving at a ramshackle house at midnight. They were awoken before sunrise. With chilly air cutting at their lungs, Melanie and Merlyn began to trek through a rugged mountain dotted with corn and coffee farms – the border between Nicaragua and Honduras.

The sisters continued this way for days, winding up through Honduras and Guatemala by bus, car, and foot along Central America’s volcano-speckled landscapes.

They marveled at jagged mountains and rolling clouds as endless as the oceans that had once surrounded them.

“Everything was new,” said Merlyn, “It felt like: ‘We’ve left Cuba.’”

Back in Cuba, their mother clung to texts and photos as signs they were okay.

“There’s a horrible emptiness in this house. I look over here, look over there and it’s like I have nothing,” she said.

The Rolo González sisters dozed and rode along with 18 other migrants at 3 a.m. as their old blue van whizzed through dense pine forests in Chiapas, Mexico in a line of five cars carrying mostly Cubans. They were cutting through an informal passage built by smugglers, and the drizzling sky turned the dirt pathway slick.

Merlyn was cradling her niece when the car slipped and spun, flipping over 10 times as it fell. The jolt threw Merlyn and the baby out of the windshield alongside the driver. The young Cuban enveloped her niece with her body. A piece of glass cut a deep gash in the back of the woman’s head.

When she landed on the muddy earth, the woman peered down and panicked as she saw the baby’s short strands of hair and face coated in blood as she peered up wide-eyed.

Melanie rushed over, checking the vitals of her family with the light of a phone, and bandaged her sister’s head the way she had learned in medical school in Cuba.

In the coming days, they would learn that the mother of an 8-year-old Cuban boy had also died that night.

“We felt like it meant that we had a lot more life to live,” said Melanie.

On New Year’s Eve, the Rolo González sisters waded through the Rio Grande from Juarez to El Paso in the early morning. They were immediately met by Border Patrol agents, detained in Texas and quickly released under 60 days parole.

Days later, the new Biden restriction was announced. They had made it just in time.

Back in Cuba, their mother watched her phone with shaking hands. It had been three weeks since Marialys had seen her daughters and granddaughter.

In Daytona Beach, family and friends waited for them. Balloons decorated their beds and a pink baby cradle was in the corner.

Marialys’ phone rang. She squinted at the grainy video.

“Look there, there’s the car, there they are!” Marialys cried as a silver car rolled up the screen. Three girls swaddled in jackets and walked up the driveway.

“Hola, mami,” one murmured with a smile.

“Se acabó la pesadilla, mi hija,” the mother choked out.

The nightmare is over, my daughter.

—–

2 Cuban sisters’ 4,200-mile journey to the US and a new life

The post 2 Cuban sisters’ 4,200-mile journey to the US and a new life appeared first on The Florida Daily Post.

The Biden administration has been conspicuously silent about how migrants who plan to claim should enter the United States when Trump-era limits end, fueling rumors, confusion and doubts about the government’s readiness despite more than two years to prepare.

“I absolutely wish that we had more information to share with folks,” said Kate Clark, senior director for immigration services at Jewish Family Service of San Diego, which has facilitated travel within the United States for more than 110,000 migrants released from custody since October 2018.

Migrants have been denied rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law 2.5 million times since March 2020 on grounds of preventing COVID-19 under a public-health rule that was scheduled to expire Wednesday until U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ordered a temporary hold. Title 42 has been applied disproportionately to those from countries that Mexico agrees to take back: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and more recently Venezuela, in addition to Mexico. People from those countries are expected to drive an anticipated increase in asylum claims once the rule is lifted.

Many expect the government to use CBPOne, an online platform for appointment registration that was introduced in 2020. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app has had limited use for people applying for travel permits and for those tracking U.S. immigration court hearings under the now-defunct “Remain in Mexico” policy.

It’s expected migrants using the app would make appointments to seek asylum in the United States, but would have to remain outside the country until their slotted time and date.

CBPOne, which some advocacy groups oppose over data privacy concerns, may be impractical for migrants without internet access or language skills. The agency also must get the word out.

Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, said he worries scammers will charge migrants to sign them up and that CBP’s limited processing capacity will result in intolerable waits.

El Paso city officials say 20,000 asylum seekers may be waiting just across the border in Mexico for pandemic-era restrictions on entry to be lifted at any time.
“Unless they plan to ramp that up significantly, someone applying for admission on CBPOne is going to be given a date that is like a year out,” Palazzo said. “Realistically, can they tell me with a straight face that they expect people to wait that long?”

Mohamad Reza Taran, 56, left Iran on Nov. 26 after converting to Christianity and flew to Tijuana, Mexico, where U.S. border inspectors at a San Diego crossing turned him away when he asked for asylum.

The computer technician planned to wait to see if he would get in immediately after Title 42 is lifted and, if not, said he would cross the border illegally, perhaps by climbing the border wall in San Diego or walking across flat desert in Yuma, Arizona. He has family in Los Angeles and sees the United States as his only option.

“I have nothing here,” Taran said in an interview outside a church in Tijuana, where he was searching for people who could instruct him on U.S. policies.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, said CBP officials told him last week they hoped to funnel asylum-seekers through official crossings and turn back to Mexico anyone who crosses the border illegally to the greatest possible extent. Doing so would likely be challenged in court because asylum law says people who enter illegally are entitled to seek protection.

No one disputes that the Border Patrol is woefully ill-equipped for processing — even while Title 42 kept a lid on numbers.

The Border Patrol paroled nearly 450,000 migrants in the United States through October — including 68,837 in October and 95,191 in September — sparing its agents the time-consuming work of issuing orders to appear in immigration court. According to a Government Accountability Office report, it typically takes at least two hours to prepare a court case, compared to a half-hour to release someone on parole.

Migrants paroled by Border Patrol agents are allowed to move freely within the United States and told to report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices at their final destinations, typically in two months.

The GAO report, released in September, details how the processing work dumped on ICE has hamstrung employees. As of March, ICE scheduled 15,100 appointments for families to complete processing as far out as March 2024. One ICE office reported up to 500 people a day showing up in person, most without appointments.

After families get a court appearance, they contend with a court system that is backlogged by more than 2 million cases, resulting in waits of several years for judges to reach decisions.

Waiting two years to just get on the court docket reflects a “totally collapsed” system, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Online registration using CBPOne would be “antithetical to the whole concept of asylum” because it could force people to wait in unsafe places, said Melissa Crow, litigation director for the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Crow and others believe CBP could process far more people than they have been.

Earlier this year, the agency processed up to about 1,000 Ukrainians a day at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, about three times its custody capacity.

Since the pandemic, migrants released in San Diego have been housed in motels until leaving, usually on a flight to family and friends east of the Mississippi River, Clark said. To prepare for the end of Title 42, Jewish Family Service opened a building for families to snack, watch television and play in a courtyard after they book travel, freeing up motel rooms for new arrivals. Clark likens it to an “airport lounge.”

CBP has been releasing more migrants to Jewish Family Service through exemptions to the asylum limits — about 200 to 250 a day, Clark said. Others are housed by the Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego.

“It’s a day we’ve been working toward for some time,” Clark said Monday, having heard nothing from CBP about how migrants will be processed after asylum limits end. She anticipates more releases but doesn’t know how many.

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How will asylum work after Title 42 ends? No one knows yet

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