Family waiting to cross border learns their CBP One appointment is canceled...WaPo
Molly Molloy
Family waiting to cross border learns their CBP One appointment is canceled
Migrants who waited months to cross the U.S. border with Mexico learned their CBP One appointments had been canceled moments after Donald Trump was sworn in as president.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — Ridel Jiménez arrived at the border bridge leading into Texas before dawn Monday with his wife and their infant daughter, hoping to be allowed into the United States after fleeing Cuba.
They had waited six months in Mexico City for their appointment with U.S. immigration officials through CBP One, the mobile app that the Biden administration launched and that President Donald Trump’s team had vowed to eliminate.
Moments after Trump was sworn in, Jiménez logged on to the app and saw a new message that left him flummoxed.
“Existing appointments are no longer valid,” it said.
Other migrants gathered around him logged on to the app and received the same message. One woman sat down and began to weep beneath a fleece blanket. Another leaned against a pole, buried her face in her gloved hands and cried. Jiménez made a video call to his mother, anxiously awaiting news from Cuba.
“After everything we’ve done and gone through to get here,” Jiménez lamented. “If only I had had the appointment for three hours earlier. That’s why we tried.”
As Trump took office promising to immediately halt “all illegal entry” to the country, an increasingly desperate scene played out immediately across the border from El Paso in the city of Juárez, Mexico.
Dozens of people arrived in the early-morning hours Monday lugging babies wrapped in blankets and the few belongings they had hoped to bring with them into the United States. Those with the earliest appointments were allowed in. But by early afternoon, migrants like Jiménez were getting messages first saying their appointments were being pushed back, and then that they were no longer valid.
Many of those with a CBP One appointment had waited for months, hoping to go through official, legal pathways to cross into the United States at a port of entry, obtain humanitarian parole and apply for asylum. In his inauguration address, Trump said he would declare a national emergency at the border and institute a policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims are reviewed.
He did not specifically address CBP One, but by early Monday afternoon, a message appeared on the app’s website stating that, effective immediately, the program was no longer available and existing appointments canceled.
Jiménez leaned against the railings of the bridge as two other migrants tried to reason with officers about what would happen next.
He sighed deeply. “This is difficult,” he said.