Tents are set up at the El Barretal shelter in Tijuana, Mexico. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

A young man sits on top of a building at a new migrant shelter on December 2 in an area known as El Barretal, in Tijuana, Mexico. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

People shower in an open area at Benito Juarez migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 28. Photo by Ariana Drehsler | License Photo

A young man from Nicaragua tries to hide from the U.S. Border Patrol as he attempts to cross the border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

A boy from Honduras climbs the border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, with his family on Wednesday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

A family from Honduras traveling with the migrant caravan gets ready to climb the U.S. border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

A woman from Honduras traveling with the migrant caravan with her family climbs the fence on the U.S. border in Tijuana, Mexico, on Wednesday. They were were caught by U.S. Border Patrol in San Ysidro, Calif., and taken into custody. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI | License Photo

MEXICO CITY, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- As 2018 draws to a close, the United States is holding 15,000 unaccompanied migrant children in detention, with a fifth of those in the Tornillo "tent city" in the the West Texas desert.

In Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego, Calif., more than 5,000 Central American migrants are on waiting lists to seek asylum, blocked from international bridges by U.S. border sentries after marching thousands of miles together across Mexico.


The asylum denial rate has surged to its highest levels ever. Yet deportations, often seen as a bellwether of immigration enforcement, are still not at the peak reached during the Obama administration -- even in the wake of President Donald Trump's zero-tolerance policy on illegal entry.

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"In 2017, there was this collective quiet, cautious sigh of relief among immigration advocates because we came to realize that immigration judges and federal judges were blocking a huge portion of Trump's most extreme executive actions," said Everard Meade, director of the Trans-Border Institute at the University of San Diego.

Last year, fewer than 3,000 unaccompanied children were in migrant detention in the United States. Mexican border cities did not house thousands of migrants. U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions were at at their lowest in 30 years. And U.S. courts had put Trump's initiatives, like an immigrant travel ban, on hold.


"We thought the institutions were more resilient than we thought they were," Meade said, "And then 2018 hit and all bets were off.

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"What we started to see up and down the immigration system was the erosion of the very things we thought were resilient in 2017. Immigration judges facing more pressure to hold asylum seekers, particularly from Mexico and Central America, to a really high standard. The pressure to detain immigrants for a longer period of time."

More children detained

There are about 100 shelters or foster homes for unaccompanied migrant children in 17 American states.

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In 2018, the number of days a migrant child spends in these facilities -- before being sent to an adult relative or friend who acts as a sponsor while their immigration case proceeds -- has reached almost 60 days, three times longer than the legally accepted limit.

Longer stays have put pressure on the shelter network, forcing the government to open an "influx shelter" for unaccompanied migrant children in June at the Marcelino Serna land port of entry in Tornillo, Texas.

"Influx shelters" are meant to be temporary. The Obama administration turned to them in the summer of 2014 when a surge of thousands of unaccompanied children from Central America arrived at the border.

The number of unaccompanied minors crossing the border has risen for the past five years. But in 2018, policy decisions about releasing children to sponsors lengthened their time in detention.


In May, the Department of Homeland Security (which includes Immigration and Customs Enforcement) entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Health and Human Services (which has the legal custody of unaccompanied child migrants) to share fingerprints of all adults living in the same household as the sponsor. Sponsoring adults stopped coming forward because many are undocumented. Indeed, ICE arrested 170 adults who were trying to sponsor children, or who lived in the same household, for their illegal immigration status.

Soon after, the Tornillo facility opened, initially with space to house 400 migrant youth in tents. But a few months later, its population had ballooned to 2,700 with a maximum capacity of 3,000, and a budget of more than $360 million.

HHS said earlier this month it could no longer sustain such a large number of children in Tornillo or elsewhere. It decided to retract the decision to fingerprint all adults in the sponsor's household, but will still share fingerprints with ICE.

"The change is a big deal," said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, an independent, non-partisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. "It shows the Trump administration is sincerely interested in reuniting these children. They have come to the realization that they can't just house increasing numbers of unaccompanied child migrants. But I don't know if the change is enough to walk back the extreme chilling effects of the enforcement acts so far.

"The only way they are going to solve the mass detention of children is by making sponsors feel comfortable about coming forward and claiming children," she said.


Asylum crisis

For Pierce, the skyrocketing detention of migrant children signals a crisis of asylum, not a border crisis: "We are having a crisis in that we are having a record number of families and children arriving on the southern border."

In late November, a caravan of 5,000 Central Americans arrived in Tijuana, just across the border from San Diego. In the runup to the midterm elections, Trump demonized the migrants, calling them "criminals" and refusing to admit them to the United States as asylum seekers.

Jessica Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that advocates for lower legal immigration and an end to illegal immigration, said the caravan is part of a bigger border crisis caused by a failure of the Obama administration to limit asylum.

"The Central Americans are responding to the incentive of being able to get away with asking for asylum saying that they have a fear of return and using that to get into the United States. It is a problem," Vaughan said.

"There are so many people coming who are never going to qualify for asylum but who are using their expression of their fear of return as an excuse to get into the country. They have no intention of applying for asylum, or even any delusions they will get it. It's just a way to get into the country," she said.

Narrowing asylum

Part of the solution has to be found in the U.S. relationship with Mexico, Vaughan said. The Trump administration has announced that asylum seekers would be forced to remain in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated.


But some experts say that's only a stopgap solution.

"The problem with the Trump administration's focus on the southern border is that they aren't trying to solve the asylum crisis," Pierce said. "They are just trying to limit asylum, physically limit asylum, and legally limit asylum and that isn't working. It's getting caught up in the court system. Until the administration takes the unsexy, work-intensive steps to fix the asylum system, the border is probably going to continue to be a thorn in their side."

Meade said former Attorney General Jeff Sessions' moves to limit asylum empirically changed immigration enforcement, first by using his legal authority to proclaim that gang and domestic violence are not valid grounds for an asylum claim.

"That seemed like a full frontal assault on the most common asylum claims from Central America," Meade said.

Sessions also drastically changed immigration practice by limiting forms of discretionary relief to asylum applicants. Administrative closure allowed immigration judges to permit an asylum seeker who fell short in their application to stay in the United States, mostly because they thought their claim was valid and did not want them returned to danger in their own country even though they did not obtain asylum.

But Sessions put an end to that, spurring a surge in asylum denials.

"This data was the first confirmation to me that 2018 really was an empirically different experience of immigration enforcement," Meade said. "Those discretionary measures that the Obama administration and previous administrations had used quite liberally were gone. They disappeared. Up and down the system, these practices that were built into immigration law and more or less continued for the first year of the Trump administration, this year they are gone, they are eroded dramatically. To the point where there is tremendous uncertainty."


The immigration drama of 2018 had much to do with how Trump pursued his priorities, Meade said.

"The volatility of the president's decision-making feeds it," he said. "Things like the decision to prosecute people for illegal entry under zero tolerance. This showed up to be an impossible fantasy and a terrible waste of resources. These are things that were just unthinkable before Trump took office."

As the back and forth over policy continues, individual migrants are suffering.

"There is short-term harm and damage done to hundreds and thousands of migrants and families," Meade said, "In that interim period between when they decide one of these policies and when it gets eventually gets shot down by the courts there is a lot of harm done and there is no real accounting for that."

Children of the migrant caravan

Albert Yared stands near the Greyhound Bus Station in downtown San Diego on Saturday. Albert traveled with his parents in the migrant caravan from Honduras hoping to seek asylum in the U.S., crossing from Tijuana to San Diego on December 21. They spent their first night in CBP custody, but are now wearing ankle bracelets and headed to Mississippi where they hope to begin their new lives. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A girl plays with a toy cart at Contra Viento y Marea shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A boy from Honduras climbs the U.S. border fence in Tijuana, Mexico, with his family on Wednesday. U.S. Border Patrol officers took the family into custody in San Ysidro, Calif. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI The boy and his mother climb the fence. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A family from Honduras traveling with the migrant caravan gets ready to climb the fence in Tijuana, Mexico. Frustration has been growing in the last few weeks at the length of the asylum process so instead of continuing to wait some migrants are trying to climb the border fence. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A child from the caravan looks at the border fence from Playas de Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. His face is lit by lights from the U.S. side so border agents can monitor illegal crossings at night. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Yeison (L), Johana, their 3-year-old son, Albert Yared, and Yeison's cousin Milson (R) traveled from Honduras with the migrant caravan. They were staying at the El Batteral shelter for families in Tijuana, Mexico, on Sunday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Johana hugs her 3-year-old son, Albert Yared. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Children entertain themselves by watching a show on a cellphone at the El Barretal shelter. The shelter is an abandoned concert hall that has the capacity to house 7,500 people. It was about half full on Sunday. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Children who crossed illegally into San Ysidro, Calif., wait under detention from U.S. Border Patrol on December 2. With growing frustration at the length of the asylum process, a dozen migrants decided to jump the border fence that divides the U.S. and Mexico. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A mother and child sit in front of Benito Juarez shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 27. Researchers say children {link:may be be hard hit: "https://www.upi.com/Top_News/Voices/2018/12/07/Parenting-in-a-migrant-caravan-Children-hit-hardest-by-strife/2481544186836/"} by the strain of the journey. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A boy watches rice and beans ladled up in a long line for food near the Benito Juarez shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on November 28. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Migrants wait in a long line for food. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Children play with toys outside the Benito Juarez shelter on November 27. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A mother cleans her daughter's shoe while sitting in a tent at the Benito Juarez shelter on November 27. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Marlene Trochez, 25, sits with her daughters, Melanie, 4, and Emily, 2, in a migrant camp in Tijuana, Mexico, near the U.S. border. The family {link:fled Honduras: "https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/11/28/Migrant-mom-in-caravan-Honduran-gangs-threatened-kids/5061543429563/"} after gang members killed her brother for failing to pay extortion to protect their store. Photo by Patrick Timmons/UPI Jeimi Gisela Mej’a Meza, 13, of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, displays a {link:smoke canister: "https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2018/11/25/US-closes-border-at-San-Ysidro-for-hours-migrants-report-being-hit-with-tear-gas/6811543174686/"} that was launched at her mother, Maria L’dia Meza Castro, 39, in Tijuana on November 25 as a group of migrants approached the U.S. border. Photo by Patrick Timmons/UPI. A migrant woman clutches her baby moments before US. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol officers fire tear gas and smoke grenades across the border and into Mexico near the San Ysidro Port of Entry on November 25. Photo by Patrick Timmons/UPI A child looks through the border fence. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A group of friends from Honduras peer out from a shelter in Tijuana. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A couple and child look through the border fence into the United States. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Migrants, including children, wait in a long line for food near the Benito Juarez shelter. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A group of people sing near the shelter. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Children wait outside the Benito Juarez shelter on November 27. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A young girl waits in line for food in front of the Benito Juarez shelter on November 26. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Food is served to the families at the Benito Juarez shelter on November 26. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI A child attends a Christian service at the new migrant shelter in the eastern part of Tijuana, Mexico, in an area known as El Barretal, on Sunday. Keith Park (L) went to Tijuana with his wife and some volunteers from San Diego, Calif., donating food after their service. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Seven-year-old Hennessey, of Honduras, sits on a swing outside the Benito Juarez shelter on November 27. Hennessey is traveling with her family. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI People wait in line at the Red Cross tent, set up to assist migrants in contacting their families, in front of the Benito Suarez shelter on November 27. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI People wait in long lines for dinner in front of the Benito Juarez shelter on November 26. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Migrants, including a young boy, listen to a Christian service at the shelter. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI Members of the caravan passed through Matias Romero, in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca on November 1 on their way from Central America. File Photo by Luis Villalobos/EPA-EFE A child wearing a superman cape talks t the volunteers at El Barretal shelter located in the eastern part of Tijuana, Mexico on December 9, 2018. Photo by Ariana Drehsler/UPI 0 of 0