Refugees, Asylum Seekers and the US

• As of 2023, there were more than 49.5 million immigrants in the U.S., or about 15% of the U.S. population. While this is the highest amount in history, it is only a slightly higher percentage when compared to 100 years ago.
• According to UNHCR, “One in every 69 people, or 1.5 per cent of the entire world’s population, is now forcibly displaced. This is nearly double the 1 in 125 people who were displaced a decade ago.”
• From 2017, with a brief dip for COVID-19 in 2020, until March 2024, encounters at U.S. borders grew to an all-time high in fiscal year (FY) 2023. Despite continuing conflicts in many countries, the year-to-date total in FY 2024 is the lowest since 2021.
• As of May 31, 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has recorded over 2.2 million encounters so far in FY 2024. Just over 83,000 encounters were unaccompanied minors and almost 1.4 million were single adults.
• While it is often assumed that most asylum seekers at the Southwest Land Border are from Mexico, Mexican citizens make up just over 515,000 encounters to date in FY 2024. Asylum seekers are from countries as disparate as China, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Myanmar, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Venezuela.
• The majority of the 38,525 detainees in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention as of June 16, 2024 have no criminal record (62.1%), while many others have only minor offenses such as traffic violations.

Throughout this profile, when the term “border” is used, it refers to any border of the United States, which includes the world’s longest undefended border with Canada, a border with Mexico and several U.S. states, and maritime borders on several coasts. However, most people cross along the U.S. border with Mexico, known as the Southwest Land Border.

Many people use the words refugee and asylum seeker (sometimes called an asylee) and migrant interchangeably, but they are all different groups with different legal protections and rights. The following two definitions are from Amnesty International:

“A refugee is a person who has fled their own country because they are at risk of serious human rights violations and persecution there. The risks to their safety and life were so great that they felt they had no choice but to leave and seek safety outside their country because their own government cannot or will not protect them from those dangers. Refugees have a right to international protection.

An asylum seeker is a person who has left their country and is seeking protection from persecution and serious human rights violations in another country, but who hasn’t yet been legally recognized as a refugee and is waiting to receive a decision on their asylum claim. Seeking asylum is a human right. This means everyone should be allowed to enter another country to seek asylum.”

While there is no internationally agreed-upon definition of a migrant, Rescue.org states that a migrant is “someone who is moving from place to place (within his or her country or across borders), usually for economic reasons such as seasonal work.”

Human Rights Watch emphasizes that meeting the definition of a refugee requires “an applicant to demonstrate they are:

• Unable or unwilling to return to that country and unable or unwilling to avail themselves of the protection of that country;
• Because of [past] persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution
• On account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”
• The last point is key for asylum seekers as their “race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion was or would be ‘one central reason’ for the persecution.”

The International Rescue Committee (IRC) said that globally, 6.9 million people sought asylum in 2023. The U.S. and Germany received the highest number of applications.

The reasons people have for leaving their homes are as varied as the countries that they arrive from. Refugees and asylum seekers are often fleeing war, conflict, and complex humanitarian emergencies, or are from countries ravaged by extreme poverty, multiple disasters, human rights violations, climate change, persecution and/or gang violence.

According to the European Commission, “Almost three in four refugees (73%) originated from just five countries: Afghanistan, Venezuela, Syria, Ukraine, and Sudan.”

Migration Policy said that the largest number of refugees (14.5%; 18,145 people) came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Syria had the second-highest number of people at 10,781 or 8.6%. CDP maintains complex humanitarian profiles for each of the top five countries:

• Afghanistan Humanitarian Crisis
• Sudan Humanitarian Crisis
• Syria Humanitarian Crisis
• Ukraine Humanitarian Crisis
• Venezuela Humanitarian and Refugee Crisis

By contrast, those crossing the land borders seeking asylum have a different geographic profile than refugee claimants. In FY 2023, 1.45 million claimants came from South or Central America or the Caribbean. Of these, 545,833 came from the Northern Triangle of Central America (El Salvador, Guatemala or Honduras) and at least 823,057 people from Mexico claimed asylum in FY 2023.

In the U.S., Congress and the president set the ceilings for refugee admissions and regional allocations each year. However, the number of people admitted does not always reach the total number allowed. In past years, the U.S. has been one of the largest recipients of refugees, but that number has dipped in recent years.

From FY 2013 to FY 2023, just over half a million people were admitted, compared to a cumulative ceiling of 750,500. For the 2022 through 2024 fiscal years, the admission ceiling was 125,000 each year. In 2022, just over 25,000 refugees were admitted and in 2023, just over 60,000 refugees were resettled. In the first seven months of FY2024, slightly more than 55,000 refugees were admitted to the U.S.

Asylum-seekers from South American countries like Colombia and Venezuela must cross the dangerous Darien Gap, a 65-mile stretch of jungle between Colombia and Panama, where they face poisonous snakes, insects, terrorist groups, unexploded Cold War-era bombs, and both organized and random acts of violence. Women and girls, as well as members of the LGBTQIA+ community, are especially susceptible to gender-based violence by other migrants and criminals who prey on those seeking to reach the U.S.

Many asylum-seekers attempt to access the U.S. by purchasing services from criminal gangs specializing in human smuggling. This is a trade that is worth an estimated $13 billion annually, as of 2023. According to the New York Times, “Migrant smuggling on the U.S. southern border has evolved over the past 10 years from a scattered network of freelance “coyotes” into a multi-billion-dollar international business controlled by organized crime, including some of Mexico’s most violent drug cartels.”

Many of these criminals deliberately mislead asylum seekers about immigration policies and conditions at the U.S. border through misinformation posted on social media. Taking advantage of the poor English skills and lack of education of many asylum seekers, this misinformation is designed to push people to use gangs of smugglers instead of attempting to make the treacherous crossing on their own. Despite the promises of support and organization, people who are being smuggled across the U.S. border are often left to fend for themselves in deadly situations.

Those who try to cross by sea can also find themselves in deadly situations. More and more often, asylum seekers from South America are attempting to reach the United States by sea instead of by land. In the Gulf of Mexico, asylum-seekers from Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and other countries are also seeking refuge by sea in growing numbers.

According to the Missing Migrants Project (MMP), nearly 3,000 deaths have been recorded among those trying to cross into the U.S. from Mexico. Causes of death include drowning, harsh desert conditions, accidents and violence.

The right to seek asylum is enshrined in both international and U.S. law. According to the International Rescue Committee, “People arriving at the U.S. border have the right to request asylum without being criminalized, turned back, used for political stunts or separated from their children.”

Traditionally, and at all ports of entry (POE) other than the southwest border land crossing (see next section), those who arrive at a designated POE can apply for asylum immediately.

CBP does not adjudicate asylum claims, so asylum seekers are typically transported to an ICE detention center where they will be interviewed to determine whether their claim for asylum meets the definition of credible or reasonable fear of persecution or torture. This process can take between two weeks and two months to complete, with the asylum seeker remaining in the detention center throughout the process.

If the interviewer determines that there is a credible fear, the asylum seeker will be given a second interview in which their asylum status will be determined. After this second interview, the asylum seeker may be granted asylum, along with their spouse and any unmarried children under 21. This also entitles an asylum seeker to receive applicable benefits.

If they are not granted asylum, they will be processed for removal and have a final opportunity to present their case for asylum to an immigration judge. If the immigration judge does not grant them asylum, they are deemed inadmissible to the United States and removed under Title 8.

The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act (Section 208), says that people can seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border “regardless of nation of origin, the route taken to the border, or the means by which the migrant crossed into the United States.”

Despite this, there are stricter protocols for admission at the Southwest Border compared to other POEs. These have recently been made even stricter.

CBP One™ Mobile Application

In 2023, the Biden administration introduced a new rule entitled “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways.” Under this rule, asylum seekers must obtain an appointment to enter through the CBP One™ mobile application which “serves as a single portal to a variety of CBP services.”

Once a user has registered, they need to request appointments daily via the app, for any of the eight Southwest POEs. To request or schedule an appointment, users and everyone on their registration must be physically located in Central or Northern Mexico. This will be verified through geolocation and liveness photo capture once an appointment is approved.

Only a limited number of appointments are available each day. The number of appointments currently stands at 1,450 applications per day. Demand for appointments exceeds the availability of daily options. There are many concerns with this process including technological glitches, limited language availability, digital literacy skills, access to the internet or electricity, or even owning a smartphone.

Suspended entry presidential proclamation

Effective June 5, a Presidential Proclamation temporarily suspended noncitizens from applying for asylum when crossing the Southern border, if they did not enter a POE with an appointment. This enables CBP or ICE to return people to Mexico in days or hours, rather than weeks to years.

This policy does not apply to unaccompanied minors, trafficking victims, people facing life-threatening emergencies and those with CBP One appointments. A statement by several advocacy groups says, “They are also rushed through fear screenings while in punitive conditions in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody, with nearly nonexistent access to legal representation.”

They add that instead of DHS officials asking about fear of return “people will only be screened for protection if they affirmatively request a fear screening or make physically apparent that they are afraid to return to their country of origin.”

Since the new rule went into place, Border Report said CBP encounters are down 40%. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, “We are removing more noncitizens without a legal basis to stay here, nearly doubling the rate at which we are removing noncitizens directly from Border Patrol custody.” Border Report said, “the seven-day average is now under 2,400 encounters, Department of Homeland Security officials said. This is the lowest level of encounters since mid-January of 2021. And down from well over 4,000 daily encounters that the Southwest border had been experiencing in recent months.”

Since June 5, more than 24,000 individuals have been returned to more than 20 countries. Individuals who are apprehended and returned under this rule might face criminal prosecution and will be subject to a five-year ban on re-entry.

More people are seeking shelter and safety in communities along the border as they try to cross through the mobile app or decide if they will still try to make a crossing between POEs. The already high number of migrants in Northern Mexico has nearly doubled in some places since June 5. Shelters say that they are short on food and space.

To offer their children a better life and to prevent them from being recruited into gangs, families often send their children, unaccompanied, across borders. This is not a decision parents come to easily.

On a December 2023 CDP webinar “Strangers in a strange land: Migrants and disasters in the U.S.”, Zenobia Lai, Executive Director of the Houston Immigration Legal Services Collective, said, “If home is not that dangerous, why would a parent send a five-year-old alone, by themselves, and hand over your child to a stranger to lead the child across through countries and the Rio Grande to come to the United States? … For many of the parents, they see that there’s no future for their children.”

Unaccompanied minors are not subject to removal at the border.

CBP facilities must release migrants within 72 hours. Once they are granted permission to stay, asylum seekers may still be forcefully relocated by politicians who are unwelcoming to asylees, migrants and refugees. Thousands of people granted legal access to the United States have been relocated to “Sanctuary Cities,” where laws have been enacted prohibiting the removal of migrants and refugees.

These relocations are unilateral, without coordination between those sending the refugees and the cities receiving them.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, in conjunction with the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard, launched Operation Lone Star in 2021 to respond to the rise in border crossings of migrants. As of Jan. 24, 2024, this cost $148 million, a price tag that has only grown since. Since April 2022, Texas bused over 105,000 migrants to Sanctuary Cities.

Florida and Arizona have also bussed migrants to other cities. Receiving communities have, in turn, provided migrants with transportation to communities where they have a network and a better chance of success.

As of June 16, 2024, there were 38,525 people in immigrant detention facilities across the country. Of these, two states housed more than 50% of detainees: 36% were in Texas and 16% in Louisiana. Of the 14 ICE detention facilities in Louisiana, 10 are private facilities.

According to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, “For FY2024, Congress has provided funding to detain a daily average of 41,500 noncitizens at a cost of approximately $3.4 billion. During FY2023, Congress provided funding to detain a daily average of 34,000 noncitizens at a cost of approximately $2.9 billion.”

ICE’s Alternative to Detention program uses technology and case management to monitor people released from the Department of Homeland Security’s custody; often these individuals are in removal proceedings. This program costs an average of $8/day instead of $150/day for custody. As of June 15, 2024, 181,499 people were in the program, with an average length of stay of 552.8 days.

There are more than 200 immigrant detention facilities. The map below shows private detention facilities in red and public facilities in blue. While there are more public facilities overall, the majority of immigration detainees are held in private centers, benefitting the companies who run them, often at the expense of the detainees.