US to ramp up deportations, expand legal pathways for migrants

The United States is expected to ramp up its deportations while expanding legal pathways for potential migrants. The move comes in anticipation of a spike in illegal border crossings when COVID-19 restrictions end next month.

The US State Department and the Department of Homeland Security said in a fact sheet of their plans on Thursday that the country will be ramping up its deportation flights to some countries while aiming to process migrants that have crossed the border illegally in the coming days.

The US will also be expanding its legal pathways for migrants at the same time, encouraging them to apply for refugee resettlement or other forms of entry in two new processing centers in Guatemala and in Colombia without resorting to making the journey to the US-Mexico border.

The two processing centers, with the support of the United Nations, will be expected to screen up to 5,000 to 6,000 migrants each month as the US has pledged to accept more refugees from the Western hemisphere. US officials said that Canada and Spain have also said they would accept migrants through these processing centers.

The centers will also process family reunification applications, which are already available to Cubans and Haitians and would be expanded to those from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The program allows migrants with US relatives to work and enter the country legally as they wait for their US visas.

The measures are part of President Joe Biden’s plan to address a potential increase in illegal border crossings when COVID-19 border restrictions end in May. Biden, a Democrat, has come under criticism from both Republicans and some members of his party for either failing to curb illegal crossings or adopting more restrictive measures similar to that of his predecessor Donald Trump.

Meanwhile, three major newspapers in the country: the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, issued a joint letter calling for the release of WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained in Russia since March.

The three newspapers stressed that Gershkovich was being detained simply because he was doing his job as a reporter. Moscow has argued that Gershkovich was arrested on charges of spying, which Washington has dismissed, with the State Department saying that Gershkovich was “wrongfully detained.”