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Politicians have been saying there’s an at the border for decades and have been trying to fix it for nearly as long. The rules have changed many times over the years — and they are about to change again as a pandemic-era set of restrictions expires May 11, 2023.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration into the U.S. at the border with Mexico was governed by a group of federal immigration laws and regulations, . These laws, among other things, set the terms for the rapid deportation of people who enter the country illegally or are not eligible for asylum.

In March 2020, after COVID-19 hit, President Donald Trump declared a national public health emergency. That triggered a more restrictive set of rules under a decades-old, little used set of public health regulations. These regulations empowered Customs and Border Protection agents to both quickly expel migrants who entered the U.S. illegally and deny asylum seekers the right to enter the country as a way to stop the spread of a COVID 19.

With the public health emergency expiring on May 11, the rules for prospective immigrants are changing again. The Title 8 rules are coming back into effect — and new measures from the Biden administration also will be in place. The administration’s goal is to stem the flow of an expected . But these new measures may exclude refugees facing real danger.

One new measure, for example, to people who arrive at the U.S. southern border without first applying for asylum online or in the country they passed through. And , people who enter the country illegally could face from the U.S.

From my work as a , I believe the new set of rules may make some of the most vulnerable migrants even more vulnerable to economic and political exploitation and violence by delaying or denying them the protection of the U.S. under federal laws and international rules about asylum.

Delaying immigration and asylum

Research shows that the from ; they have only made the immigration process longer and more difficult.

In fact, have increased more than sevenfold over the past 10 years. There are more than 750,000 cases pending, with average wait times for a court date currently running over four years.

Our research shows that as migration deterrence policies have multiplied and intensified over these past two presidential administrations, migration stories have become more complex and migrant journeys more arduous.

These figures do not account for the time it may take for migrants to get from their home countries to the Mexico-U.S. border, where they may also have to wait months or years to be allowed to cross. Parallel to immigration court backlogs are , where the slow trickle of admissions to the U.S. of new asylum seekers, permitted now only via a glitchy smartphone app, have failed for years to keep up with new arrivals, seriously challenging Mexico’s capacity for housing them.

Humanizing deportation

Since 2016, I have coordinated a digital storytelling project called which has published personal narratives in audiovisual form from over 350 migrants. It is on the human consequences of contemporary U.S. border and migration control policies.

Our research shows that as migration deterrence policies have multiplied and intensified over these past two presidential administrations, migration stories have become more complex and migrant journeys more arduous. One story from our archive shows how several of these policies have played out for a migrant family.

Our project is unable to verify all details of migrants’ stories, and what you read here is based on one family’s recollection of events.

A migrant from Honduras discusses the hardships, including deportation and kidnapping, he and his family faced as they traveled to the U.S. seeking asylum.

Deportations, childbirth and a kidnapping

A left his homeland initially in a in 2018. After crossing into the U.S., the migrant says that despite his insistence that he was fearful of being sent back and his refusal to sign a voluntary removal form, Border Patrol officers shouted obscenities at him and physically , then deported him to Honduras.

The migrant set out again soon after that, this time with his pregnant wife and young son. Before getting far, they were detained by Mexican immigration authorities and later deported. But they left again, getting as far as Huixtla, Chiapas, in Mexico, where they had to stop so that .

The family settled for a time in Monterrey, Nuevo León, but struggled to make a living there. They decided to pay a smuggler to accompany the wife and son to the Mexico-U.S. border, where in the summer of 2019 they crossed and were picked up by Border Patrol. Officers allowed the two to initiate their asylum process through the , a U.S. government program that returns migrants who arrived in the United States from Mexico by land back to Mexico while U.S. immigration proceedings are underway. Under its guidelines, they were sent back to Mexico to await a court date.

Human rights , such as extortion, kidnapping and rape that migrants face in Mexico. In this case, immediately after mother and son returned, . Without the money to pay the ransom, they had to turn to friends and family, including the woman’s mother, who sold her house in Honduras to get them released.

Back in Monterrey, the husband, afraid to try applying for asylum after being deported but determined to reach the U.S., paid a smuggler to get him to Tennessee.

Meanwhile, his wife didn’t wish to stay in Monterrey. “I was really afraid – I didn’t go out because I felt they might kidnap me again,” she told us. So she retreated to southern Mexico with her son and baby daughter.

Working as an auto mechanic, the husband was able to earn enough money in Tennessee to pay most of what they owed the smugglers and their family.

Then, in 2021, when the Biden administration allowed migrants who had abandoned their Migrant Protection Protocols asylum applications to resume the process — but in the U.S. — the mother and children joined the husband in Tennessee. The following year, , where as an immigrant family they feel more welcome than in Tennessee. Although the wife is still waiting for a court date, the family is hopeful that she and the children will be granted asylum. But she was thrilled to give birth recently to a baby boy in California.

“Because it’s more peaceful,” says the father, who is afraid to join his wife’s asylum claim because of his previous deportation. “We’ve heard that it’s where the immigrant community is most protected.”

have been enacted to deter migration, but many people have migrated anyway. They have been forced to navigate long, difficult, dangerous journeys and often traumatic migration processes that have endangered and complicated their lives.

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