On Jan. 8, Donald Trump gave the first Oval Office address of his presidency in which he warned of a “growing humanitarian and security crisis at our Southern border.” Since then, he’s threatened to declare a national emergency, described the border as a “major” and “massive” crisis, and even called the situation “an invasion.” For 34 days — the longest-running shut down in history — the president refused to reopen the federal government unless Congress gave him $5.7 billion to build more border walls, record funding to jail an unprecedented 52,000 immigrants per day, and a wishlist of unconscionable legal changes specifically targeting the most vulnerable immigrants, including children seeking asylum.

I recently traveled to Tijuana, Mexico, with Lee Gelernt, lead attorney in the ACLU’s challenge to the Trump administration’s asylum ban, which tried to disqualify people from seeking asylum if they enter the United States at any place other than an official port of entry. The ACLU first successfully blocked the ban on Nov. 9, 2018. We were there to meet with Al Otro Lado, a California-based organization that provides legal services to migrants and refugees in Tijuana and is a plaintiff in our lawsuit.

Customs and Border Protection is one of the world's largest law enforcement organizations, but it claims it doesn't have “capacity” to process more than a handful of asylum seekers at a time. For context, CBP processes around 100,000 travelers at the San Ysidro Port of Entry each day, but it has only been accepting between 20-80 asylum seekers per day. As a result, there are around 5,100 people stuck in dangerous conditions in Tijuana who want to seek asylum or other protections in the U.S. but are facing an expected waiting time of up to 12 weeks or longer.

Our visit made one thing clear: The humanitarian crisis at the border is one created by President Trump’s own policies which target asylum seekers, and it won’t be solved by a wall.

What’s more, the president seems intent on making the situation worse. On Thursday, it was reported that the administration plans to turn back asylum-seekers from the border, forcing them to wait in Mexico while their asylum cases are decided in the U.S.

Here are three very real problems we observed at the border, all made worse by the Trump administration’s anti-asylum policies.