A recent report by the Center for Immigration Studies blames the current chaos at the southern border on the Biden administration's CBP One app, saying the app is not working properly.
“In January, the Biden Administration rolled out its plan to address the chaos at the Southern border and discourage illegal entries,” Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), said in a recent release from the group. “Under this new plan, would-be illegal crossers could obtain humanitarian admittance permits through the CBP One app before arriving at the border. … The system is failing. Migrants are instead abandoning the program and opting to cross illegally anyway.”
The CBP One app was designed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for endangered immigrants to use in order to get delivered safely to U.S. officials, a CIS YouTube report said. Through a series of questions, the app guides users through to where they need to go. But the app has not worked as intended, partly because many people are using it and they are not getting processed efficiently. There have been wait times of weeks or even months. The app has also crashed several times, meaning immigrants are still just heading toward the border to turn themselves in, as they had previously done.
CIS also reported that a recent tragedy in which more than 40 immigrants died in a Mexican immigration center fire could be tied to the long wait list for the app. As migrants at the border kept waiting in Mexican border towns to enter into the U.S., the Mexican government decided to round up the migrants and send them to immigration centers, one of which caught fire. As a result, the Mexican government stopped sending them to immigration centers, and migrants have begun heading to the border again.
The Biden administration is telling immigrants they must use the app, a Twitter post about the CIS report said. But those who don't are still being let in, meaning migrants are starting to ignore the CBP One app.
With the COVID-19 Title 42 policy restrictions set to end soon, it is expected that the number of immigrants who go past the border to turn themselves in will increase, CIS reported.
