On credible fear - Gaby Del Valle in NYT:

‘Six years ago, President Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security used similar language to describe a caravan of asylum seekers, most of whom had walked from Central America through Mexico. This February, however, it was not migrants heading toward the border but the so-called Take Back Our Border convoy, made up of truckers, militia members, and “patriots” who mobilized to repel a perceived migrant invasion. The travelers, some of whom called themselves the Army of God, stopped in several places before making a spectacular arrival at the tiny town of Quemado, Texas. Pastors in cowboy hats preached against welcoming the stranger; congregants were baptized in tin tubs; Ted Nugent performed.’

(…)

‘In truth federal border policies have for the most part been extraordinarily harsh under President Biden. He extended Title 42, a policy that Trump invoked in March of 2020 under the pretext of addressing the pandemic, which allowed Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Border Patrol’s parent agency, to “expel” migrants who crossed the border back to Mexico. (CBP made 1.4 million expulsions in the period after Biden came to office and before April 2022, when he tried to lift Title 42 but was prevented from doing so by a federal court.) Unlike deportations, the expulsions were nearly immediate: people were sent back within minutes or hours of entering the US, without a hearing before an immigration judge. From a legal perspective, they were never admitted into the US.’

(…)

‘The asylum process itself is forbidding. Once they turn themselves over to CBP, migrants undergo a “credible fear” interview, in which officers determine whether they’re at risk of persecution in their home country. Applicants who pass the initial screening are issued notices to appear in court, months or years in the future. The threat of deportation looms throughout; those who aren’t granted asylum are removed to the places from where they fled.
Instead of restoring this imperfect process, the Biden administration made it harder to apply for asylum at official border crossings and imposed new punishments on those who don’t. Applicants must now schedule an appointment through an app called CBP One before they can present themselves at a port of entry. Interview slots are limited to just 1,450 per day, and they go fast. As a result, migrants are forced to wait in Mexico for an average of two months before asking for asylum.’

(…)

‘In sum, the process the Biden administration established after Title 42 expired, which was supposed to be “safe, orderly, and humane,” has in fact caused greater dysfunction, chaos, and death. If it was an attempt to appease conservative critics, it has clearly backfired: they still fault him for not being harsh enough. Migrants are caught in the middle of this political standoff, stranded in Mexico by Biden’s policies, forced to take routes made still more perilous by Abbott’s, and punished again for doing so by Biden. But if they determine that the risks of staying at home are greater than those at the border, they will take their chances no matter what measures are put in place.’

(…)

‘In early August Mexican officials recovered two bodies from the river. The deaths were a turning point for many Eagle Pass residents, some of whom had previously supported Abbott’s initiatives but now began to change their minds. In a complaint filed to the public safety department, one of the troopers dispatched to the border claimed he had been ordered to deny migrants water and “push [them] back into the water to go to Mexico.” He describes intercepting an injured man, who “stated that he had a child who was stuck on a trap in the water…He extricated his kid and while doing so the barrel trap lacerated his leg.” Two married farmers, Magali and Hugo Urbina, asked the public safety department to remove the razor wire from their property after they saw a pregnant woman emerge from the river with blood running down her arms.’

(…)

‘That Thursday the National Guard had blocked Border Patrol from entering Shelby Park to respond to a call about migrants who had drowned. The following morning bodies of a mother and her two children were found in the Rio Grande nearby. In his letter, Abbott blamed the drownings on the White House’s “lawless border policies,” which he claims have “enticed illegal immigrants away from the 28 legal entry points along this State’s southern border—bridges where nobody drowns—and into the dangerous waters of the Rio Grande.” (In fact Biden’s policies—punishing illegal crossings and limiting the number of people who can ask for asylum at legal ones—have not “enticed” migrants into danger so much as pushed them there.) In late March, after hundreds of migrants broke through a concertina wire barrier in El Paso, conservative media framed the situation as further proof that Biden had lost control of the border. But the migrants were almost certainly turning themselves over to Border Patrol.’

(…)

‘There is indeed chaos and dysfunction at the border, all of which has resulted in the loss of innocent lives. The real trouble, though, isn’t caused by the migrants but by the people going to extreme lengths to keep them out.’

Read the article here.

Compared to the situation in the Netherlands (last year I published a book about refugees in Europe ‘The refugee, the border guard and the rich Jew’ – Soros is never far away where discussions about refugees interrupt) but the Mexican-American border is at least for refugees as the Mediterranean. According to IOM more than 8000 refugees died last year while trying to cross from Mexico into the US.

A difference is that the EU is not yet openly willing to admit that they push refugees back, often with deadly consequences.

The credible fear interview is tad ironic.

What’s to fear is the border police, in the EU and the US, and in the case of Texas, also the Army of God.