Two months ago, the federal government began work to replace a section of border wall in California, the first wall contract awarded in the Trump administration outside of eight prototypes that were built last year in San Diego.
This week, Vice President Mike Pence visited the site to check on the progress.
The original Calexico border wall was built in the 1990s out of recycled scraps of metal and old landing mat, CBP said in a statement in February, when work on the replacement began.Pence acknowledged that the barrier at the Calexico border existed prior to Trump’s calls for a more massive wall but said the repairs, which will increase the height of the wall by several feet, underscores the need for stronger reinforcements everywhere.“This is the beginning of keeping our promise to the American people that we’re going to build a wall,” Pence said.
Meanwhile, 100 miles away, migrants from the caravan-through-Mexico were struggling to get processed through a San Diego area port of entry.
About 4:30 p.m. Sunday, the first 50 of the roughly 200 asylum-seekers attempted to walk into the San Ysidro Port of Entry to officially begin the process of requesting safe haven, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.But several hours later, the status of the first wave of migrants to seek asylum, mostly women and children, was uncertain, according to the Union- Tribune. As darkness fell, the first group had not entered the U.S. facility to be processed, and leaders of the Pueblo Sin Fronteras Caravan made no announcements about their fate, the newspaper said.
The Border Patrol reported “several groups” of people in the caravan have entered the country illegally since Friday by climbing a dilapidated metal fence. It didn’t say how many.
For some reason, the border officials seem prepared to be skeptical of requests for asylum.
US authorities have advised there may be delays in their ability to process such a large group of migrants and that some “may need to wait in Mexico as [border officials] work to process those already within our facilities”.The group from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador arrived in Tijuana on buses over the past couple of days, and most of them said on Saturday that they intended to seek legal asylum in San Diego.Death threats from local gangs, the murder of family members, retaliatory rape, and political persecution back home prompted them to flee, members of the group said.But by Sunday morning, doubts were setting in after US immigration lawyers told the group of the hardships they could suffer if their asylum cases were not strong enough, including detention, deportation and long periods of forced separation from their families.
Perhaps I would be less wary of the claims these people need asylum if they didn’t wave flags from their countries of origin as they hopped our barrier. That act reveals the truth of what this caravan is: An invasion.
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