Border Authorities Struggle To Manage Large Group Of Asylum Seekers

The latest mass crossing of asylum-seekers from Central and South America has put pressure on Mexican and U.S. border authorities, reports El Paso Matters.

On Sunday, around 1,500 asylum-seekers primarily from Ecuador, Nicaragua and Peru crossed into the U.S. at El Paso. It was one of the largest mass crossings of the border from Juarez in Mexico to El Paso, officials said.

Chihuahua State Police escorted the group of asylum-seekers from Jimenez to Juarez earlier on Dec. 11 in a caravan of 20 buses.

Mexico and the U.S. are struggling to process northward mass migration, with El Paso’s 3,500-capacity Border Patrol Central Processing Center sheltering over 5,100 migrants, as of Dec. 11.

With U.S. immigration facilities becoming overwhelmed, Border Patrol officials release migrants whose paperwork they have processed to local nongovernmental shelters as well as onto the streets of El Paso.

American officials anticipate to see more migrants and asylum-seekers on the border with the end of Title 42, a Trump-era, anti-COVID policy that gave legal grounds to expel migrants.