For asylum seekers, access to the U.S. hinges on a phone app that’s challenging to use
For asylum seekers, access to the U.S. hinges on a phone app that’s challenging to use
With Title 42 now lifted, thousands of migrants along the U.S. southern border are hopeful about their entering the country. Asylum seekers must use an app from the Customs and Border Protection agency called CBP ONE.
It allows migrants to schedule appointments to cross the border and begin the asylum process.
In Tijuana’s Agape Migrant Shelter, each morning around 650 people log into the CBP One mobile app to try to secure an asylum appointment. The app works on a first-come-first-serve basis. Every day, tens of thousands of migrants compete for just 1,000 daily appointments.
“All at the same time trying to enter in one place,” said Albert Rivera, who runs the shelter. “So it gets over-jammed. And there’s not too many of them that get an appointment.”
Some migrants have spent months here, logging on every day, scrambling for an appointment — including Vidal Garcia. He’s seen other people in the shelter cry tears of joy after finally getting scheduled.
“I am happy about them because I wish them the best,” Garcia said.
Garcia himself hasn’t been so lucky. “But then I get in the office and start to cry,” he said. “Sometimes but not all the time.”
Between January and May, about 23,000 migrants in Tijuana got appointments through the mobile app. More than one-third of those have gone to Russians, according to the Mexican government.
After the invasion of Ukraine, thousands have fled Russia; they fly to Mexico in hopes of getting asylum in the U.S. and account for less than 10% of Tijuana’s migrant population.
Russian asylum-seekers are often able to stay in hotels with powerful WiFi signals. Meanwhile, Central American migrants tend to sleep in overcrowded shelters and struggle with the app on outdated phones.
Enrique Lucero is head of Tijuana’s Migrant Affairs Department. He said this disparity is a fault of the CBP One app.
“This has been the application’s biggest failure,” he said in Spanish.
The app doesn’t filter to figure out which migrants are most vulnerable, like who is unsheltered or who has been a victim of a crime, he said.
Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
But the agency did announce changes to the app on May 10. CBP now offers more asylum appointments. It also gives priority to people who have been registered on the app the longest.
Tijuana officials say those changes do seem to be helping more Haitian and Latin American migrants get through on the app. But they’re awaiting more data to know for sure.
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