CBP One: The online system to apply for asylum in the United States is quickly saturated

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images

CBP One is an official app from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to the app’s download page. Serves as a single portal to a variety of services provided by the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and it’s supposed to be fast and convenient.

DHS enabled the app CBP One What a new mechanism for immigrants to schedule appointments to appear at ports of entry, facilitating safe and orderly arrivals and is being used since January 18 by those seeking an exception to the Title 42 public health order.

The application facilitates send advance information and schedule an appointment capacity for non-citizens without the proper travel documents, according to CBP.

Hours before dawn, countless undocumented immigrants hoping to claim asylum in the United States go online, hoping to secure an appointment to try to start their US immigration application.

Many of those people complain that when they try to get the CBP One app to respond to commands on their phone screens, they receive errors or the application does not respond.

There are new appointments available every day at 6 am, but immigrants are blocked from making appointments due to error messages from the CBP One mobile applicationwhich has been overloaded since the Biden administration introduced it on January 12.

The most frequent errors for many are that they can’t log in, others can enter their information and select a date, only to have the screen freeze on the final confirmation. Some receive a message saying they must be near a US border crossing, despite being precisely near a US-Mexico border crossing.

Some advocates are disappointed that there is no explicit special consideration for LGBTQ applicants. Migrants are asked if they have a physical or mental illness, disability, pregnancy, are homeless, face a threat of harm, or are under the age of 21 or over 70.

CBP One replaced an opaque patchwork of waivers to a public health order known as Title 42 under which the US government has denied migrants’ rights to seek asylum since March 2020.

Many of these people who have come from other countries are in Mexico waiting for a CBP One appointment, an immigration waiver that allows them legal entry into the United States, or a change in immigration policy, unless they attempt to enter the US illegally, in which case they may be immediately deported to Mexico.

If the CBP One application is successful, asylum seekers could use it even if Title 42 is lifted as a safe and orderly alternative.

With information from The Associated Press

It may interest you:

– DHS announced new measures to process immigrants seeking asylum under a Title 42 exception
– Immigrants arrive at the border to request asylum through CBP One
– The exceptions to Title 42 that can be applied to immigrants at the northern border of Mexico