Over 11K migrants amassed at southern border — as caravan heads to US
More than 11,000 asylum seekers are already huddled on the Mexican side of the southern border in shelters in camps, awaiting an opportunity to cross over into the United States — as a massive migrant caravan continues to make its way north.
Roughly 3,800 asylum seekers from Mexico, Haiti, Venezuela and Cuba are gathered in Tijuana, Mexico, CNN reported.
Another group of about 3,723 migrants are biding their time in Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas.
A crowd of 4,000 asylum seekers also waiting in Matamoros, Mexico, scattered in camps, shelters and abandoned homes.
The migrants are hoping to take advantage of a federal parole program introduced by the Biden Administration earlier this year and cross legally, however, Glady Cañas, who runs a nonprofit providing services to asylum seekers in Matamoros, said those waiting are starting to feel “desperate,” she told CNN.
Meanwhile, migrants are pouring across the southern border illegally into America at record numbers.
Nearly a quarter million people tried to cross the besieged border in November — the highest November number and the third-highest monthly total on record.
There were 242,418 encounters last month, according to the latest figures released by the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Friday.
December is on track to reach an all-time high.
A migrant caravan that could swell to as many as 15,000 is also slowly inching toward the border after setting out from Tapachula, Mexico on the Guatemalan border on Christmas Eve.
Border officials have seen a massive increase in the number of Haitians, Guatemalans, Cubans and Nicaraguans attempting to enter the US to take advantage of a Biden administration parole program for those nations.
However, many of them are still gathering at official ports of entry — like airports or seaports — before applying for the program.
The backlog of immigration cases pending under President Biden has hit record levels, soaring to more than three million pending cases in November, according to a new report.
According to data from Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, the stack has grown by one million new cases in a year.
