Who Gets In? A Guide to America’s Chaotic Border Rules.

By Natalie Kitroeff, Christine Zhang, Miriam Jordan and Eileen SullivanMay 11, 2023

New restrictions on asylum will lead many migrants to be deported — but others will still get into the United States. Here’s what the process will look like.

On Thursday, the United States will lift a pandemic rule that had been used to immediately kick out hundreds of thousands of migrants who crossed the border illegally over the last three years.

Now, those migrants who enter the country illegally will have the opportunity to apply for asylum, which is a legal status people can get if they prove that they would face persecution or other risks at home.

That doesn’t mean it will be easy to actually qualify. The Biden administration is set to impose new restrictions on eligibility, and if the process works as planned many migrants would still be deported relatively quickly. But if new arrivals overwhelm the system, it’s possible officials will let many people stay in the country to await asylum hearings.

So what determines whether you get in or not? Sometimes it’s about how good of a case you can make, or whether you’ve followed the rules of an often chaotic system. Much of the time, it’s just luck.

Here’s what the process of getting across the border will look like under the new rules, as best as we could determine with the help of Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, and one of the top experts in the country on this issue.

1 Seek humanitarian parole

Few nationalities qualify.

In the last several months, President Biden used his executive authority to open what essentially amounts to a back door for certain migrants to enter the country legally: apply for what’s called “humanitarian parole.”

It gives Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans the chance to live for two years in the United States if a sponsor files an application for them online. Hundreds of thousands have taken advantage of the program. The catch is that the number of monthly slots is limited. You also have to get someone already in the United States to take financial responsibility for you, and you need to have a valid passport and the money to pay for a plane ticket.

2 Get an asylum appointment at a border checkpoint

Requires using a glitchy app with few slots.

In January, the administration opened yet another pathway to encourage people to migrate in an orderly way rather than take a dangerous route that creates a bottleneck at the border. This one involves a new app, called CBP One. Migrants can use the app to make an appointment with border officials at a port of entry, who then can decide whether to allow them into the United States with a notice to appear in immigration court down the line.

It sounds relatively easy, except that the app has been glitchy, and the likelihood of getting an appointment has been compared to winning a lottery ticket. There are few slots available each day relative to demand. Only migrants who are in northern Mexico, near the U.S. border, or in Mexico City are eligible to use it. And many people have spent months trying day after day to make this work for them, to no avail.

3 Cross illegally

Many people turn themselves in to seek asylum.

First of all, it’s worth getting a basic sense of what it actually means to cross the border illegally. Sometimes it means traversing a desert or forging across a large body of water — but it’s not always that hard. In some places, like parts of Ciudad Juárez, the Mexican city across from El Paso, Texas, you can get to American soil by walking across a relatively narrow and calm stretch of the Rio Grande.

If migrants did that when Title 42 was in place, U.S. officials could send them back to Mexico within minutes, which will no longer be an option. Now, people who enter the country without proper documentation will either be put into formal deportation proceedings, which is a years-long, drawn-out process, or an expedited removal process that is intended to process and deport people much faster.

Families and children will mostly be put on the first, slower track, which means they will be given a date to appear before an immigration judge, but will be allowed to wait inside the country, living and working legally until their case is decided.

Single adults, on the other hand, will probably go through the expedited lane. If the system works as intended, those migrants could be on their way to deportation with a felony charge in hand within days.

If you entered illegally and did not enter the United States because you were fleeing persecution or serious danger, you will probably be deported. If you are seeking safe haven, you must claim fear of returning to your home country to apply for asylum. But it will be much harder to qualify than it once was, thanks to new barriers President Biden is putting in place this week.

Migrants will now have to show that they applied for asylum and were rejected by Mexico or another country they passed through on their journey in order to be considered for protection in the United States. That requirement, which critics call a “transit ban,” will probably face legal challenges by human-rights groups who say it amounts to a near prohibition on asylum. It can take months, if not years, to apply for asylum in Mexico, where the government’s system is extremely backed up. Many migrants also say they do not feel safe in countries they travel through.

If you’re put on the fast track, this might be applied just days after you crossed.

Even if you’re released into the United States, whenever you finally go before a judge you will still have to show that you were rejected for asylum by one of the countries you passed through on your way to the United States — even if that journey happened months or years ago.

Asylum hearings can take years to complete, and most claims are denied, leaving migrants without the right to stay in the United States and eventually apply for permanent status.

A final option, which has always been available and probably always will be: You can make an often arduous, perilous, and uncertain trek through rough terrain and unforgiving elements, and then try to sneak into the United States without being caught. If you manage to make it, you live in the shadows, with the risk of the authorities finding and deporting you at any moment.