Glitchy CBP One App meant to deter illegal migration useless during Title 42 surge
Kaelan Deese Anna Giaritelli
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The federal government’s solution to unprecedented illegal immigration at the U.S. southern border has fallen short of all expectations and even managed to unite liberal and conservative policy groups in fury over the botched attempt to rein in the situation at the border.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection agency in January debuted a new feature in its CBP One app that would allow migrants outside the United States to schedule appointments to see if they met the threshold for admission and therefore could avoid crossing illegally.
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But for migrants trying to go about getting into the U.S. the right way, it is but another stepping stone that can often lead to nowhere, according to several people who had tried to do so and ended up illegally crossing the border in Brownsville, Texas.
A group of four migrants standing around the Brownsville South Padre Island International Airport on Wednesday told the Washington Examiner that using the U.S. Customs and Border Protection app, CBP One, is “very complicated” and only works “depending on the time of day.”
“It is a matter of luck,” one immigrant said in an interview with the Washington Examiner this week, noting that despite the complications others face, they were able to eventually find success using it. A separate immigrant at the airport said on Tuesday that the app provides “good information” but complained about the limited windows of availability to access the app.
Other migrants have told media outlets that the app has been riddled with bugs largely due to the app crashing along with server and connectivity issues, as cellphone service is not guaranteed in areas close to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Reports of frustrating experiences with the app come as more than 10,000 migrants were caught crossing the southern border illegally each day this week as Title 42, a Trump-era pandemic policy that allowed for the quick expulsion of migrants on the basis of a public health emergency, comes to an end Thursday at 11:59 p.m. EDT.
Last week, CBP said that beginning May 10 it will increase the number of available appointments from 740 to 1,000 daily, extend the window for making appointments from 10 minutes to 23 hours, and “prioritize noncitizens who have waited the longest.” The app is described by the agency as a provider of a “safe, orderly, and humane process for noncitizens to access ports of entry rather than attempting to enter the United States irregularly.”
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz conceded during a roundtable with reporters in El Paso Wednesday that the app had had its fair share of problems. Ortiz said he had worked with Catholic Charities to update the app in a way that was easier to understand for migrants.
“I do think that it’s going to continue to be a bit of a challenge because we’re never I think equipped for the sheer volume that we’re dealing with right now, but I think we will get there,” Ortiz said.
The app is also facing political criticism, with accusations from Republicans and a former Trump-era top border official who claim the app is merely a scapegoat to facilitate illegal migrant crossings.
“They can claim the CBP One app wasn’t working when they applied,” Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) tweeted Thursday, adding, “Family members may accompany migrants who have prior parole authorization (allowing chain-migration on steroids).”
Rodney Scott, the former Border Patrol chief under the Trump administration, told the Washington Examiner the agency under President Joe Biden’s command “took an app that was built for business primarily and legal travelers, and then they decided to open it up to the world to schedule people for these appointments at the port of entry.”
Conservative immigration reduction group NumbersUSA concurs with Scott and Crenshaw’s concerns, saying the Biden administration is using the app to try to “get people who would normally cross the border illegally,” Chris Chmielenski, deputy director of the group, told the Washington Examiner.
“The use of humanitarian parole is supposed to be used for extraordinary cases where there’s truly a humanitarian need. And instead, the Biden administration is saying that they’re expanding legal pathways into the country,”
Meanwhile, civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union have expressed concerns about the app’s limitations that have been plaguing migrants who are attempting to use it for entry into the country.
“There’s no guarantee that people who encounter issues using the app will even be able to get in the queue if they go to a port of entry, let alone meet the extremely narrow exception for inability to use the app,” a spokesperson for the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project told the Washington Examiner.
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As of Wednesday, there were 26,354 people in CBP custody, which Ortiz said was, “several thousand less” compared to earlier in the morning. Meanwhile, five of nine Border Patrol sectors in the southwest are over 125% capacity ahead of the Thursday night end of Title 42.
The Biden administration announced on Wednesday finalized steps to further restrict asylum, including deployment of troops and other personnel to the southwest border, along with funding for border communities.