On Thursday, the Trump administration revealed it expelled nearly 10,000 migrants from the U.S. southern border in March, returning them to Mexico or their home country under a public health mandate that officials say requires them to circumvent immigration and asylum laws to prevent coronavirus spread.
Under an order released on March 21 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. border authorities worked to process migrants found at all land boundaries quickly. During a conference call with reporters, Acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan said more than 80 percent of migrants currently met at the southern border are being separated within hours from U.S. soil.
The measures reflect how the administration - in reaction to the pandemic - takes steps toward implementing some of the long-awaited immigration-restricting priorities of President Trump, in this instance banning asylum seekers and unaccompanied children from reaching the United States, and in an end-run around the laws and bureaucratic demands.
Administration officials said they were relying on recommendations from the CDC to protect US citizens. Migration rates have dropped to near their lowest point in decades since the rapid expulsions were introduced, with illegal border crossings falling by 56 percent, said CBP commissioner Mark Morgan.
Morgan also admitted that the U.S. has all but closed its doors to asylum seekers escaping persecution, including those seeking to access US ports of entry legally.
CBP said that it has less than 100 people in detention, down from a peak of more than 19,000 during last year's border crossing surge. During the first 11 days of the new laws, at the Mexican border, 6,375 citizens were expelled and at the Canadian border, at 20.
Senate Democrats sent a letter to the acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf, who oversees border services, saying that the Trump administration appears to have given itself sweeping powers to summarily deport large, undisclosed numbers of people who arrive at our border.
Had the CDC order not been released, Morgan said it would overwhelm immigration detention facilities and migrant shelters, providing a fertile ground for the coronavirus to spread among its officers and the people they arrest. "This must be a wake-up call that matters about border protection," Morgan told reporters.
In total, nearly 34,000 migrants were detained or turned back at the southern border in March by U.S. border officials including those removed under the CDC order. Under the public health order, a Mexican official told CBS News, Mexico does not monitor how many refugees the U.S. has expelled to its territory.
