AP Spotlight
About 240 people seeking asylum in the United States are camping next to a busy highway in Washington state, wondering if police would follow through on threats to arrest them for trespassing, and hoping officials instead might let them move into a vacant motel next door.
KENT, Wash. — Kabongo Kambila Ringo stood outside the tent where he has been staying with his pregnant wife and ate from a clear plastic tray of Girl Scout cookies melting in the midday sun.
He was one of about 240 asylum-seekers camping in a grassy lot along a highway south of Seattle, wondering if police would follow through on threats to arrest them for trespassing, and hoping officials instead might let them move into the vacant motel next door.
“It's very difficult,” the 29-year-old from Congo said in French. “There's not enough to eat. There's not even a way to wash ourselves.”
The cluster of tarp-covered tents that have covered the field in Kent, a Seattle suburb, since last weekend highlights the strain facing many communities — even some far from the U.S.-Mexico border — as President Joe Bidenattempts to restrict asylumand neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead of this fall's election.
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SomeDemocratic-led northern citieshave seen huge influxes of migrants. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has sent more than40,000 asylum-seekers to Chicago, mostly by bus orplane.
The Seattle area has seen fewer, but with homelessness already an immense challenge, even that has stressed the region's capacity.
More than 2,000 asylum-seekers have come through a suburban church, Riverton Park United Methodist in nearby Tukwila, since 2022 after word got out that it was willing to help. The church has made room for hundreds of migrants to stay every night and has raised money to place families in motels.
Hundreds were moved from tents at the church to hotels or other short-term rentals as extreme cold hit over the winter. But as money ran out, they have faced rolling evictions.
Ringo said war forced him and his wife to flee Congo in 2022. They took a ship to Brazil, then spent two years walking to the U.S. border in Arizona, where they arrived March 23. He was detained, while his wife was taken to a hospital.
A man he met in detention gave him the church’s address, and when he was released, he said, his brother bought him a plane ticket to Seattle, where he reunited with his wife, now eight months pregnant.
Many of those who have been camping in Kent — primarily migrants from Congo, Angola and Venezuela — previously stayed at the church or were evicted from motels.
Lacking other options and awaiting permission to work in the U.S., they set up camp outside a disused Econo Lodge. The countypurchased the 85-room motelduring the COVID-19 pandemic as emergency quarantine housing.
“We want to pressure the county and the city to open the hotel for this group of migrants,” said Ian Greer, a volunteer for a coalition of migrant services organizations that has been assisting the asylum-seekers.
Under a legal agreement between the county and the city, the motel can only be used for quarantine housing and other city-approved uses. Officials say they have no immediate plans to open it for the migrants.
“Full operations and capital for an emergency shelter, even in the short term, are beyond the County’s available resources,” Kristin Elia, a spokesperson for the King County Executive's Office, said in an emailed statement.
Kent police last weekendposted a 48-hour evictionnotice at the encampment, saying the migrants did not have permission to be at the county-controlled property. But as the deadline came and went, authorities backtracked, giving the migrants breathing room as they hope for long-term shelter.
Late last year, King County provided $3 million in grant funding to respond to the migrant influx, helping house more than 350 individuals and families. In April, it awarded four nonprofits $2 million to provide shelter, food, legal services and other assistance. When some migrants camped in a Seattle park last month, the city moved dozens of families into motels and is paying for them to remain at least until July.
Beginning next month, a flood of new money from the state should help.
Children ran around in the steamy grass Wednesday as the sun dried out tents after heavy rains. The facilities consisted of five portable toilets and two hand-sanitizer stations. Larger tents served as kitchen and pantry. Volunteers dropped off food and toiletries. Migrants adjusted tarps and chatted beneath canopies.
Government-politics
Biden says he's restricting asylum to help 'gain control' of the border
- By SEUNG MIN KIM, COLLEEN LONG and ELLIOT SPAGAT - Associated Press
Linda Gutiérrez recalledleaving Venezuela: “There is no medicine in Venezuela. Our family is dying of hunger,” she said in Spanish. They went first to Colombia, then Chile. When they were forced to leave Chile, she said, they made their way through the perilousDarien jungle— the dense and roadless rainforest that divides South America from Central America — with her children and young grandchildren to the U.S.
They eventually reached Riverton Park United Methodist, where they stayed for five months, she said. They were then placed in a nearby motel, but only for a month.
In the encampment she met Jose Guerrero, from Puerto Cabello — the same area west of Caracas where she lived. Guerrero came to the U.S. with his wife after leaving their three children in the care of grandparents.
“All of us here have been struggling for months," Guerrero said. "My hope is that the mayor, the county, the leaders, open that hotel. As you can see, it’s empty and abandoned. All of us, together, we can maintain it and get it ready to house us.”
Pictured: President Joe Biden speaks June 4, 2024, in the White House about an executive order imposing restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Manuel Balce Ceneta, Associated Press)
Advocates say it will put migrants in danger and violate international obligations to provide safe haven to people whose lives are threatened. The Biden administration denies that.
Legal challenges are imminent.
There are also serious questions of whether the new measure can stop large-scale migrant entries. Mexico has agreed to take back migrants who are not Mexican, but only in limited numbers. And the Biden administration doesn't have the money and diplomatic support it needs to deport migrants long distances, to China and countries in Africa, for example.
Those who claim asylum today are generally free to live and work in the United States while their claims slowly wind throughoverwhelmed immigration courts.
Pictured: Men seeking asylum, including Peruvians, line up April 25, 2024, as they wait to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, in Boulevard, Calif. (Gregory Bull, Associated Press)
The threshold triggers a halt on asylum until average daily arrests for illegal crossings fall below 1,500 for a week straight. The last time crossings were that low was in July 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic-related asylum restrictionsknown as Title 42carried no legal consequences and encouraged repeat attempts. Now, migrants will be issued deportation orders even if they are denied a chance to seek asylum. That will expose them to criminal prosecution if they try again and ban them for several years from legally entering the country. It's a key difference.
“We are ready to repatriate a record number of people in the coming days,” Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant homeland security secretary for border and immigration policy, said in a conference call for Spanish-language reporters.
Migrants who express fear for their safety if they're deported will be screened by U.S. asylum officers but under a higher standard than what's currently in place. If they pass, they can remain to pursue other forms of humanitarian protection, including those laid out in the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
Unaccompanied children are exempt, raising the possibility that some parents may send their sons and daughters across the border without them.
Pictured: Venezuelan migrants wave a U.S. flag at a television helicopter that flew over the Rio Grande on May 12, 2023, in Matamoros, Mexico, a day after pandemic-related asylum restrictions called Title 42 were lifted. (Fernando Llano, Associated Press)
This is the latest in a series of measures under the Biden and Trump administrations to deter asylum-seekers, none of which have had lasting impact.
In May 2023, Biden imposed similar obstacles to asylum for anyone who crossed the border illegally after passing through another country, such as Mexico. A federal appeals court allowed those restrictions to stay in place while advocates challenge it, but itappears to have little impact.
Illegal crossings fell after 2023's restrictions took effect, but the lull was short-lived as the number of screening officers was inadequate for the enormous task. The rule's application in only a small percentage of arrests showed how budgets can fail to match ambitions.
Biden invoked a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the president to ban entry for groups of people if their presence “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” President DonaldTrump used these powersto ban entry of people from some predominantly Muslim countries, though advocacy groups are expected to argue that Biden failed to meet that “detrimental” criterion.
Pictured: A woman carries her child Sept. 23, 2023, after she and other migrants crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico, to be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Eric Gay, Associated Press)
A critical one.
The U.S. has limited funding to fly people home to more than 100 countries, including many in Africa and Asia. It also lacks diplomatic sway and logistical arrangements to deport large numbers to many countries, including China, Russia and Venezuela.
A 1997 court ordergenerally limits detention of families with a child under 18 to 20 days, a highly ambitious and perhaps unrealistic turnaround time to screen people who express fear of deportation and then put them on a flight.
Even for single adults, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has enough funds to only detain about 34,000 people at a time.
Mexico has agreed to take back up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, in addition to Mexicans. Its commitment does not extend to other nationalities.
This year, Mexico has also made it far more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. border, largely by preventing them from riding freight trains and stopping them on buses to turn them around to southern Mexico. While Mexican authoritiesare blocking migrants' advance, relatively few are deported, causing many to be stuck in Mexican cities far from the U.S. border.
Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s foreign relations secretary, told reporters in May 2024 thatMexico won't allow more than 4,000illegal entries a day. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, is expected to continue policies of her mentor and Mexico's current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
How Biden’s new asylum order will work
President Joe Bidenin Juneunveiled a haltto asylum processing at the U.S. border with Mexico when illegal entries reach a threshold that he deems excessive. The measure takes effect immediately because the new policy is triggered when arrests for illegal entry reach 2,500. About 4,000 people already are entering the U.S. each day. It was a major policy shift on a critical election-year issue that's exposed Biden to Republican criticism over anunprecedented surgein new migrant arrivals in an election year.
Pictured: President Joe Biden speaks June 4, 2024, in the White House about an executive order imposing restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. (Manuel Balce Ceneta, Associated Press)
Advocates say it will put migrants in danger and violate international obligations to provide safe haven to people whose lives are threatened. The Biden administration denies that.
Legal challenges are imminent.
There are also serious questions of whether the new measure can stop large-scale migrant entries. Mexico has agreed to take back migrants who are not Mexican, but only in limited numbers. And the Biden administration doesn't have the money and diplomatic support it needs to deport migrants long distances, to China and countries in Africa, for example.
Those who claim asylum today are generally free to live and work in the United States while their claims slowly wind throughoverwhelmed immigration courts.
Pictured: Men seeking asylum, including Peruvians, line up April 25, 2024, as they wait to be processed after crossing the border with Mexico nearby, in Boulevard, Calif. (Gregory Bull, Associated Press)
The threshold triggers a halt on asylum until average daily arrests for illegal crossings fall below 1,500 for a week straight. The last time crossings were that low was in July 2020, during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic-related asylum restrictionsknown as Title 42carried no legal consequences and encouraged repeat attempts. Now, migrants will be issued deportation orders even if they are denied a chance to seek asylum. That will expose them to criminal prosecution if they try again and ban them for several years from legally entering the country. It's a key difference.
“We are ready to repatriate a record number of people in the coming days,” Blas Nuñez-Neto, assistant homeland security secretary for border and immigration policy, said in a conference call for Spanish-language reporters.
Migrants who express fear for their safety if they're deported will be screened by U.S. asylum officers but under a higher standard than what's currently in place. If they pass, they can remain to pursue other forms of humanitarian protection, including those laid out in the U.N. Convention Against Torture.
Unaccompanied children are exempt, raising the possibility that some parents may send their sons and daughters across the border without them.
Pictured: Venezuelan migrants wave a U.S. flag at a television helicopter that flew over the Rio Grande on May 12, 2023, in Matamoros, Mexico, a day after pandemic-related asylum restrictions called Title 42 were lifted. (Fernando Llano, Associated Press)
This is the latest in a series of measures under the Biden and Trump administrations to deter asylum-seekers, none of which have had lasting impact.
In May 2023, Biden imposed similar obstacles to asylum for anyone who crossed the border illegally after passing through another country, such as Mexico. A federal appeals court allowed those restrictions to stay in place while advocates challenge it, but itappears to have little impact.
Illegal crossings fell after 2023's restrictions took effect, but the lull was short-lived as the number of screening officers was inadequate for the enormous task. The rule's application in only a small percentage of arrests showed how budgets can fail to match ambitions.
Biden invoked a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that allows the president to ban entry for groups of people if their presence “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” President DonaldTrump used these powersto ban entry of people from some predominantly Muslim countries, though advocacy groups are expected to argue that Biden failed to meet that “detrimental” criterion.
Pictured: A woman carries her child Sept. 23, 2023, after she and other migrants crossed the Rio Grande and entered the U.S. from Mexico, to be processed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, in Eagle Pass, Texas. (Eric Gay, Associated Press)
A critical one.
The U.S. has limited funding to fly people home to more than 100 countries, including many in Africa and Asia. It also lacks diplomatic sway and logistical arrangements to deport large numbers to many countries, including China, Russia and Venezuela.
A 1997 court ordergenerally limits detention of families with a child under 18 to 20 days, a highly ambitious and perhaps unrealistic turnaround time to screen people who express fear of deportation and then put them on a flight.
Even for single adults, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has enough funds to only detain about 34,000 people at a time.
Mexico has agreed to take back up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, in addition to Mexicans. Its commitment does not extend to other nationalities.
This year, Mexico has also made it far more difficult for migrants to reach the U.S. border, largely by preventing them from riding freight trains and stopping them on buses to turn them around to southern Mexico. While Mexican authoritiesare blocking migrants' advance, relatively few are deported, causing many to be stuck in Mexican cities far from the U.S. border.
Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s foreign relations secretary, told reporters in May 2024 thatMexico won't allow more than 4,000illegal entries a day. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, is expected to continue policies of her mentor and Mexico's current president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.
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