More people crossed the U.S.-México border in 2023 than in any other year on record.
In fiscal year 2023, an estimated 2.5 million people were apprehended or expelled by U.S. Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-México border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection data for the agency’s Southwest region — from California to Texas — shows that the U.S.- México border accounts for the bulk of apprehensions and expulsions. Nationwide, border patrol agents encountered a total of 3.2 million people in 2023 at regions that include airports and the Northern and Southwest borders.
The numbers at the U.S.-México border were up from 2.3 million the fiscal year before and 1.7 million in 2021, according to monthly statistics released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
From 2021 to 2022, the last year for which there are official government records, the total number of asylum claims filed in the United States went from about 150,000 to over 492,000 — more than tripling.
The increases have led to fervent calls to shut the border down, begin mass deportations or raise the standards for asylum. It also has prompted an outpouring of support and mutual aid, with community volunteers, humanitarian organizations and local governments working to help welcome and orient people seeking asylum.
A Senate bill released in February and sponsored by Arizona’s independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema would have revamped the asylum system, speeding up the process and also raising the threshold, which would require more evidence of past or potential persecution for someone to obtain asylum. While the bill has failed to pass, it was followed by a similarly restrictive legislative proposal from the House. Neither bill has received enough support, and many are left wondering what’s next besides political bickering.
An estimated 80% of Americans say the government is doing a bad job handling the arrival of migrants at the U.S.-México border, according to a February 2024 report from Pew Research.
Woven throughout the divisive rhetoric are spools of misunderstanding and misinformation.
To clarify what asylum is, how it works, and what it looks like in Arizona, we’re publishing this short explainer to go along with our series of articles on the current state of asylum in our region of the Southwest.
What is asylum?
Asylum is legal protection from being deported back to a country where a person faces danger. Asylum was first written into international law as part of the 1951 Refugee Convention, in response to the massive increase in refugees — and many countries’ refusal to welcome them — during the Holocaust. The United States was slow to sign on, and only did so after the treaty was updated in 1967. The reason the U.S. didn’t initially sign is disputed, but domestic pressure to maintain sovereignty and not enter into other binding international agreements was a key factor.
Asylum protections officially became part of domestic U.S. law in 1980 with The Refugee Act. Following language used in the international convention, the law directs the attorney general not to deport someone seeking asylum if their “life or freedom would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
The broad list of reasons — especially the “particular social group” category — has led to decades of legal controversy about who should be granted asylum. People fleeing because of the effects of climate change, for example, do not officially qualify for asylum.
There are other forms of protection that are similar to asylum but don’t come with pathways to citizenship. Some of them also require meeting a higher threshold of proof before being granted protection. People can be at least temporarily safe from deportation through the Convention Against Torture and “withholding of removal,” a legal term for protection from deportations without additional benefits of a path to citizenship.
Despite the codification of asylum protocol, the practice of asylum, or offering refuge to those in need, goes back millennia and, according to scholars and experts in asylum, is a core principle in many societies and religions.
Is asylum legal?
Yes. Both U.S. and international law protect the right to ask for asylum. But there is a stark difference between the right to ask for asylum and obtaining asylum.
According to U.S. law, it doesn’t matter how or where you ask for asylum. People who cross the border by getting over or through gaps in the wall or fording the river are still legally permitted to ask for asylum. An “illegal asylum seeker” is a contradiction in terms, writes immigration expert Hein de Haas, who authored “How Migration Really Works” and is a professor of migration and development at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands.
However, in March 2020, the Trump administration leveraged Title 42 as an emergency health order — touted as a means to prevent the spread of COVID-19 — to turn away migrants who came to the U.S.-México border. That paved the way for officials to start restricting people seeking asylum outside of ports of entry. Before the implementation of Title 42, people could cross, ask for asylum, were screened and then were either detained or released to await their immigration cases.
The Biden administration continued using Title 42 to expel people over the border and restrict their right to seek asylum for more than two years. After rescinding the policy last May, the administration put in place other measures restricting asylum. Now, most of the people crossing the Rio Grande into Texas or crossing the desert into Arizona and turning themselves into Border Patrol to seek protection cannot access asylum. Exemptions include exceptions for children traveling alone and “exceptionally compelling circumstances,” such as medical emergencies or imminent threats to life.
Yael Schacher, the Director of Americas and Europe for Refugees International said the government argues that it has legal authority to limit eligibility for asylum.
“Under the asylum ban, people still have access to protection screenings against refoulement,” Schacher said.
Non-refoulement, also commonly known as “non-return,” is the core principle of the Refugee Convention, which prohibits people from being returned to a country where they face serious threats or danger. Schacher said the Biden administration is justifying offering less protection by arguing they are offering at least some protection.
How does someone apply for asylum?
The first step to applying for asylum is simply asking for it.
Until last year, the best way for someone crossing the U.S.-México border to ask for asylum was by telling a Border Patrol agent. If someone was already in the United States, they could go to a U. S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office and file for asylum there. But asking for asylum does not mean it will be granted.
Currently, for asylum-seekers in México, the U.S. government is encouraging them to apply for an appointment to take the initial steps of their asylum claim via the CBP One Mobile App, a smartphone application through which 1,450 people a day are allowed to enter into the United States via ports of entry.
Along the Arizona-Sonora border, the only port of entry where people can get an appointment through CBP One is Nogales, which takes a maximum of 100 appointments a day, according to immigration experts and local and national aid workers. Across the U.S.-México border, a maximum of 1,450 appointments are available a day, according to an Aug. 2023 press release from the Department of Homeland Security. The government does not specify the number of appointments per border city. The CBP One appointment process has been plagued with delays and glitches, and some wait for months to score an appointment. If they are able to get an appointment, most people are screened, processed, and allowed into the United States and given a future court date to continue their case. Unlike those who cross outside of ports of entry, people who enter via CBP One can quickly receive work permits.
To ultimately win an asylum case after you cross the U.S.-Mexico border, you must first show that you have a “credible fear of persecution or torture” if you were to return to your country of origin. If you pass your credible fear interview, you proceed to an asylum hearing where you must demonstrate and provide evidence that you were persecuted in the past or that you have a well-founded fear that you will be harmed in the future if you go back to your country. A well-founded fear can mean that there is at least a 10% chance that you will be harmed in your home country.
Either an asylum officer working for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or an immigration judge employed by the Department of Justice, will weigh an asylum claim.
Who is asking for asylum?
While Mexicans are still crossing the border into Arizona and other Southwestern states more than any other nationality, demographics have changed in recent years. In fiscal year 2023, just more than 700,000 Mexicans were apprehended after crossing the U.S.-México border. After Mexicans, it’s been mostly people from Venezuela (about 200,000 apprehended in fiscal year 2023) and Guatemala (220,000 apprehended). Asylum-seekers from Haiti, Honduras, Ecuador, various countries from Africa, as well as India, Russia, and China are crossing the border into Arizona as well.
Those demographics are a significant change from 10 years ago, when people seeking asylum at the U.S.-México border were overwhelmingly from Mexico or Central America.
Despite fears stoked by some pundits and politicians, no migrant who has crossed the U.S.-México border has ever committed a terrorist act in the United States. Some people who have crossed the border are on the terrorist watch list. Last fiscal year, Border Patrol counted an estimated 249 people who crossed the Southwest border and were on the watch list. That accounts for a fraction of the 2.4 million people who crossed the Southwest border. Many people are placed on the list mistakenly or for activities that are not threatening nor constitute terrorism, according to government studies.
While some politicians and others target immigrants by claiming their presence leads to increased crime rates, experts say that such fears are unfounded. Various studies have found that first-generation immigrants have much lower incarceration rates than native-born residents. Data going back 143 years shows that the likelihood of an immigrant being incarcerated is 60 percent lower than for someone born in the United States, according to a 2023 study from Stanford University’s Institute for Economic Policy Research.
“Relative to undocumented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes,” according to a 2020 study focusing on Texas over a six-year period from 2012–2018.
Are asylum-seekers gaming the system?
In fiscal year 2023, 99.5 percent of all people whose asylum cases were decided by immigration judges showed up to court for their hearings, according to data compiled by Human Rights First. Unlike citizens, people seeking asylum are not entitled to attorneys at government expense. That means that people either pay out of pocket, find willing attorneys to help them pro-bono, or represent themselves in court. According to a January report, only 30% of people in removal proceedings — which means the government is trying to deport them — are represented by attorneys. A 2023 study from Migration Policy Institute shows that having representation improves efficiency, lowers the costs of public resources expended and, for the migrants in court, decreases their chances of being deported.
“The immigration system has been pretty broken— backlogged and needing reform — for 20 years,” Schacher said.
Though there are major delays, the overwhelming majority of asylum-seekers follow the system as it is currently functioning, Schacher said.
In Arizona, the average wait time, as of early 2024, for a recently arrived migrant to have an asylum hearing in immigration court is 984 days, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Compared to other states, that’s actually on the fast side. The average wait time for an asylum hearing in Nebraska is more than 2,000 days.
Ultimately, people will be either granted or denied protection. If denied, they have the right to appeal, though many are ultimately deported. Historically, most people who have applied for asylum have been denied.
In fiscal year 2023, Mexicans were granted asylum only 4% of the time, according to statistics kept by the Department of Justice. Though grant rates initially went up during the Biden administration, overall and for all nationalities they remain below 50%.
While people are awaiting a final decision, they may apply for work permits 150 days after they submit their application.
A migrant at the Casa Alitas Welcome Center talks on the phone on Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024. Photo by Michael McKisson | Arizona Luminaria
Do Arizona counties give money to asylum seekers?
The short answer is no. Yuma, Pima, Maricopa, Mesa and Cochise have received federal funding to receive, orient, and sometimes lodge — typically for just one or two nights — recently arrived asylum-seekers. Occasionally and in emergency situations, Pima County will use some of its own funding to briefly support a family or someone with an urgent medical problem. Pima County Deputy County Administrator Francisco García says that those situations are exceedingly rare.
Despite claims to the contrary, migrants who cross the border — asylum-seekers or not — do not receive gift cards or free phones. The sole exception is some Haitian and Cuban asylum-seekers who may receive some federal benefits.
Pima County has a website explaining the work they do with asylum-seekers, as well as the guiding principles about why they do it. The federal funds supporting Pima County’s work are expected to dry up soon and county officials have been clear that they will not use county revenues to continue the work.
Are there more asylum seekers coming to the U.S. today than ever before?
Last year, yes.
Experts such as Schacher say that part of the reason is that other pathways to legally migrate have been narrowed.
In January 2024, the U.S. Border Patrol recorded 124,220 encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border, a decrease of 50% from December 2023, and the slowest month since Biden took office. Despite the overall drop, in January of 2024, the Tucson sector remained by far the busiest along the border, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The same month, the Tucson sector saw twice as many encounters between Border Patrol agents and migrants than any other sector along the U.S.-México border.
Since May 2023 through the end of January 2024, DHS has deported or returned more than 520,000 individuals, the vast majority of whom crossed the Southwest border, including more than 87,000 individual family members. The majority of all people encountered at the Southwest border over the past three years have been removed, returned, or expelled.
Meanwhile, the total backlog of cases in immigration court is more than three million.
Those numbers may be slightly misleading, however, as not everyone who intends to apply for asylum does so right away, some people are blocked from applying for asylum and can only seek different forms of protection from deportation.
Austin Kocher is an assistant professor with Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, also known as TRAC, which collects and analyzes data about immigration detention and enforcement, among other issues.
“My professional guesstimate is there’s a total of about two million pending asylum cases,” Kocher said a lot of those have been filed in the past year or so.
“I think it would be in the interest of the federal agencies and in the public’s interest to provide much more up-to-date data on the number of people filing asylum and the outcome of those claims,” Kocher said.
Instead, Kocher explained, researchers and politicians have to deal in “guesstimates.”
What happens to asylum seekers when they come to the United States?
It depends.
Currently, about 1,450 asylum seekers a day are allowed into the country through appointments scheduled on the CBP One mobile app. Those people are vetted, given background checks, and typically entered into immigration proceedings — given a future court date for the beginning of their asylum case. Most of them are released into the United States.
Many people seeking asylum who cross the border outside of ports of entry — meaning through the desert or across the river — are not seeking to evade Border Patrol agents, but willingly submit themselves to agents to request asylum. Because of new regulations issued by the Biden administration in May of 2023, however, many of those people will not be eligible for asylum. They may seek another form of protection from deportation, such as withholding of removal, but they will likely never be able to become citizens.
Some of those people are released into the United States and given future court dates. Others are transferred into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and sent to detention centers. As of late January, there were almost 40,000 people locked up in immigration detention.
“People with prior criminal records or deportations will likely be detained,” Schacher said, “as will anybody who raises national security concerns.”
A parent with a minor child or children will not be detained as there is no family detention right now, Schacher explained. But if there are two parents with children, the father might be detained and the mother and children released.
Many of the people who cross the border at or near Nogales, Sasabe, Lukeville, or Douglas pass through Pima County’s welcome centers, where they may spend a night or two, have a few meals, and are typically on their way to elsewhere in the country.
Should people seeking asylum be detained?
According to international law, no. But countries across the world, including the United States, detain people seeking asylum.
During a sit-down interview with Arizona Luminaria Tucson, John Modlin, Chief Patrol Agent of the Tucson Sector of Border Patrol, said that agents have begun busing some adult migrants to Border Patrol stations in either Yuma or El Paso. It’s a strategy that was rarely used before numbers of people seeking asylum spiked over the past year, Modlin said.
In the Yuma or El Paso stations, the people are held for about 10 to 14 days where they have the initial screening that begins their asylum process — technically called a “credible fear interview.” The duration of the stay Modlin described is far longer than CBP’s own detention standards, which state, “Detainees should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in CBP hold rooms or holding facilities.”
Modlin told Luminaria that holding people for an extended time was part of their efforts to respond to unprecedented numbers of asylum-seekers arriving to the U.S.-México border.
“In a perfect world every person would be held until there was a hearing barring any really extreme sort of humanitarian cause,” Modlin said.
International human rights standards, however, state that asylum-seekers should not be detained, and that detention should not be used as a punishment or as a means of deterring other migrants.
“There’s nothing humane about ambiguity in someone’s life,” Modlin said. When someone is released into the United States, he said, it could take years or more before they know if they are granted asylum or some other form of relief.
“A much more humane thing is to put that person into the process and get it done as quickly and as obviously judiciously as possible, giving them all their due processes,” he said.
Immigration experts, however, point out that processing asylum claims while people are held in detention, especially in what can be trying and sometimes inhumane conditions, of short term Border Patrol custody, does not make for fair hearings.
How can I follow this issue?
Despite months of recent efforts to pass new legislation, Congress remains deadlocked. Nobody knows if they will find a way forward, but experts agree that immigration and asylum policy will remain a key issue in this year’s election.
Arizona independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat will be on the ballot in the fall, and while she announced March 5 that she would not seek reelection, whoever represents Arizona next year could play a key role in ongoing discussions around immigration. Republicans Kari Lake and Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb and Democrat Congressman Ruben Gallego have all announced they are running.
Arizona House members could also be vital voices in shaping future legislation. Rep. Raúl Grijalva, D-Ariz., has long been an advocate for migrant rights. First-term Rep. Juan Ciscomani, R-Ariz., has pushed for stricter border policies. Both are up for reelection in November.
A number of local organizations work with people seeking asylum including Kino Border Initiative and No More Deaths. Other organizations with local chapters include Human Rights First, the International Rescue Committee, American Civil Liberties of Arizona, Catholic Charities through Casa Alitas and Lutheran Refugee Services.
This article first appeared on AZ Luminaria and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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