WASHINGTON (AP) -- Border officials are aiming to more than quadruple the number of asylum seekers sent back over the southern border each day, a major expansion of a top government effort to address the swelling number of Central Americans arriving in the country, a Trump administration official said Saturday.
It was the latest attempt to ease a straining immigration system that officials say is at the breaking point. Hundreds of officers who usually screen cargo and vehicles at ports of entry were reassigned to help manage migrants. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen asked for volunteers from non-immigration agencies within her department, sent a letter to Congress late this past week requesting resources and broader authority to deport families faster, and she met with Central American and Mexican officials.
Officials hope to have as many as 300 people returned per day by the end of the week, focusing particularly on those who come in between ports of entry, said the official, who had knowledge of the plans but was unauthorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
But the process so far has been slow-going, and such a sizeable increase may be difficult to achieve. The plan has already been marred by confusion, scheduling glitches and an inability by some attorneys to reach their clients. In San Ysidro alone, Mexico had been prepared to accept up to 120 asylum seekers per week, but for the first six weeks only 40 people per week were returned.
Mexico has been treading lightly on the subject. After Trump lashed out, saying Mexico and the Central American nations were "doing nothing" about illegal immigration, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said his country would do everything it could to help to maintain a "very respectful relationship" with the U.S. government and Trump.
Meanwhile, Nielsen sent a letter to the heads of other agencies within her sprawling, 240,000-person department, asking for volunteers to help with border duties. And she wrote to Congress asking for more temporary facilities to process people, more detention space, and the ability to detain families indefinitely and to deport unaccompanied minors from Central America. While children from Mexico can be returned over the border, laws prohibit deportation to other countries.
Democratic congressional leaders expressed deep concern, saying the administration wanted to revive "horrific" and "immoral" plans, noting its failed hardline border policies have created "senseless heartbreak and horror."
"Democrats reject any effort to let the administration deport little children, and we reject all anti-immigrant and anti-family attacks from this President," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.