Tijuana, Mexico – Standing in a common area of the Casa del Migrante shelter in the Mexican border city of Tijuana, Maria taps her phone screen but can’t get the app she is using to work.
Maria and her family fled their native Haiti to Venezuela years ago. But recent Venezuelan economic and political instability forced them to leave that country, too, and she said they are now hoping to apply for asylum in the United States.
But she and her husband and daughter have tried every day for the last month to get a US immigration appointment through the country’s new CBP One app — to no avail.
And without a CBP One appointment, the family faces steep consequences should they try to cross the border irregularly, including being deported back to Haiti and barred from entering the US for up to five years.
Maria, who did not want her last name published because she feared it would affect her immigration case, says she doesn’t want to risk it. She is willing to wait in Mexico for as long as it takes.
“Cross the border illegally? No,” she tells Al Jazeera in Spanish. “If we enter the US illegally, we will be deported.”
US policies
US President Joe Biden’s administration launched the CBP One app earlier this year, saying it would help create a “safe, orderly and humane border processing” system amid an influx of migrant and refugee arrivals at the border with Mexico.
The application’s use has become more important as a pandemic-era US policy known as Title 42 ended just before midnight on May 11, ushering in new rules that the administration says aim to encourage people to take “legal pathways” to immigration while punishing those who do not.
For asylum seekers in Mexico seeking to reach the US, the app is the main pathway to get an immigration appointment at a port of entry.
But CBP One has come under fire for its errors and bugs, and migration rights advocates have said the system does not take into account the conditions asylum seekers who reach the US border find themselves in.
Many do not have smartphones, or access to robust internet connections. Others have struggled to complete the app’s many requirements before confirming an appointment and watched as available slots quickly filled up.
Last week, as Maria’s tech-savvy teenage daughter took her mother’s phone to try to make an appointment, many of these problems were immediately clear.