As the U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments from attorneys for both sides in the debate over the President’s travel ban involving immigrants from mostly Muslim countries, the debate over immigration from south of the border has heated up.
That’s because of what has been described as a caravan of well over a thousand of mostly Central American and some Mexican nationals that has been making its way to the Mexican border with the United States.
The number of people in the caravan has fallen to a reported 400 or so after the President and the Dept. of Homeland Security warned they would not be allowed into the U.S. and the Mexican government gave some of them visas.
The first couple of busloads arrived this week. So you might be wondering, as a lot of people probably are, what happens now?
According to U.S Customs and Border officials, here’s what happens when people like these people show up at the Mexican border and want to apply for asylum in the U.S.
Someone who tells border officials they are afraid to return to where they are from, under U.S laws, they must be processed for possible asylum in the U.S.
They then wait in detention centers until border officers from the U.S interview them to figure out if what they are saying is true.
If they decide it is, then they wait for a judge to hear their case when they will then have to show that they’ve been persecuted or harmed in their home country. And all of that takes time, sometimes lots of time.
But then for a long time, a lot of people have been wondering just how much more time it will take to ever come up with an agreement in Washington on what to do about immigration.
(Photo credit Getty Images)
Central American migrants are reflected in a mirror while travelling in the 'Migrant Via Crucis' caravan in Tijuana northwestern Mexico, on April 24, 2018. - It began March 25th at the Mexican border with Guatemala. The activists leading it said they would help some 200 migrants request asylum in the United States because they are fleeing violence or repression. (Photo by GUILLERMO ARIAS / AFP) (Photo credit should read GUILLERMO ARIAS/AFP/Getty Images)