Central Americans who arrived at the San Ysidro border crossing a week ago seeking asylum in the US did so while confronting Trump immigration policy, but were finally allowed to enter the country last Friday in order to have their requests processed.

As of March, a caravan of people fleeing violence in Central America was reported to be traveling to the US-Mexico border to seek asylum in the United States, but when it arrived, the first group of caravan migrants was stopped by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents and told that there was no more room at their facility.

The first group of Central Americans, mostly from Honduras, were then forced to set up camp outside of the CBP facility while another group waited near the entrance to the Mexican side of the border crossing before US border officials finally began allowing some from the first group to enter their facility last Monday evening.

Among the first eight people who were accepted, according to one report by CNN, was a 27-year-old pregnant mother of two boys, named Gabriela Hernandez.

CNN had apparently been covering her travel since April 6 in Puebla, Mexico, almost two weeks after she started.

PBS Newshour's report on violence against women in Honduras is very similar to Gabriela's, who initially traveled the 440 miles from Honduras through Guatemala to reach the caravan in the Mexican border town of Tapachula, Chiapas.

Gabriela would also be the perfect example of those fleeing violence from their countries to seek asylum in the US.

She claimed that she had been threatened by neighborhood gangs who told her that she had 12 hours before they would return to kill her 6-year-old son, Omar.

Gabriella told CNN that she left that night.

She's seen in the following AP News report at 1:50.

In it, she says that she doesn't understand how children as young as hers can cause difficulties for President Trump when seeking asylum in the United States. She said that as a parent, she wants a better life for her children.

Her knowledge of President Trump's views is because he has publicly vilified the caravan and US immigration policy of past presidents overall.

Since his campaign, Trump immigration policy has evolved from building a wall along the Mexican-American border to enforcing a nationwide crackdown on undocumented workers and revoking decades-long programs such as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

In fact, as the video above shows, President Trump referred to the migrant caravan during a Michigan rally on the same weekend that the American asylum seekers had arrived, saying that if he didn't get his wall funded by Congress this year, he was willing to close the country down.

Nonetheless, caravan organizers said on Friday that all of the migrants had finally been processed and that the camps they had set up around the San Ysidro crossing had also been cleared out.

Seeking asylum in the US: vilified by Trump

In addition to the CBP's claims at the beginning of the week that their facility was full, the caravan was also confronted by the Trump administration, which verbally attacked the migrants as criminals who Trump claimed were attempting to undermine the law.

When reports of the caravan's destination were initially circulating, not only did President Trump used his public podium in Michigan to vilify the caravan, he also used his other platform on Twitter.

The sentiment against those requesting safe haven in the United States was already established when Donald Trump originally said during his campaign announcement in 2015:

"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Here is an interview he did on CNN that year where he apparently doubled down on that view.

During the last week that the asylum seekers in the USA were making headlines, President Trump's attorney general Jeff Sessions announced that he was sending immigration judges and prosecutors to the San Ysidro border to process the requests of those taking refuge full-time.

Given the administration's aggressive view on immigration reform, this still raises the possibility of deportation.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR.) applauded Jeff Session's decision, which falls in line with the Republican view that the immigration process is not thorough enough, designating the Catch and Release program as a dismal failure.

Here is that tweet, further lending credence to the Trump immigration policy currently under development.

In one piece about the Central American caravan, Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) sowed doubt over the legitimacy of those claims from the American asylum seekers and also attacked the current US immigration system.

In what would appear to be a retaliation tactic of Trump immigration policy by his administration, it was announced at the end of the week that he would end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for all Hondurans living in the United States.

The President's aggressive immigration stance is no doubt forcing Trump immigration policy to rapidly reform under his terms.

One CNN correspondent published an OpEd in response to the administration ending TPS saying that 'Trump ending protection for Hondurans was unnecessary,' where he explained that while the status was indeed temporary, the corruption, violence and the failed infrastructure in Honduras was still too problematic to send Hondurans back to.

The OpEd points out that the reason the soon-to-be rejected Honduran citizens were in the United States in the first place is in itself an acknowledgment by the US that the Central American country could not reabsorb their citizens.

Now, Hondurans who have been in the US since 1998 and got Temporary Protected Status from the devastation of Hurricane Mitch have until January 2020 to leave or they will be deported.

Steps to seeking asylum in the US

According to the CNN contributor of the OpEd about Hondurans, Raul A. Reyes, it's very likely that with the TPS of these Central Americans being revoked, many of them will simply allow their deadline to run out and become illegal.

On the other hand, with the new migrants seeking refuge in the United States, Republicans such as Rep.

Arrington have argued that the current immigration process already allows those wanting to stay in the US the chance to escape and disappear into the country and become illegal, as they are not being detained during the lengthy processing.

By US law, those seeking asylum in the US would have a maximum of one year since making their request before they become a permanent resident, totaling five years before they can request citizenship.

Trump supporters and those rejecting the idea of accepting immigrants from South of the border wonder why immigration services didn't turn the caravan away when it arrived.

The organization that sponsored the caravan, Pueblo Sin Fronteras, was trolled by Trump supporters via Facebook with one suggesting that Drone strikes be called on the migrant caravan before arriving.

Here is a screenshot of that comment.

Organizers and lawyers for the migrant caravan have said from the beginning that by law, the CBP had to hear the migrant's requests for asylum.

Those American asylum seekers would have to make their case to CBP officials in order to request refuge and then, it would be up to the border officials to determine the legitimacy of their claims.

Nonetheless, this further verifies the chance that many from the caravan could still be deported if their claims are rejected.

A follow-up article by CNN about American asylum seeker Hernandez titled: 'Aunt says she got call with news of migrant mom Gabriela Hernandez', pointed out that Gabriela probably already pleaded her case with an immigration judge.

Much like Republicans and Trump supporters feared, if Gabriela has family in the US, she will likely stay with them until she goes to court for a hearing on her asylum application.

The CNN article also referred to an immigration statistics report by the Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which said that more than 75 percent of the asylum requests made by those seeking it, who were specifically fleeing violence from Central America, were rejected between 2011 and 2016.

The Justice Department already claimed at the beginning of the week that they had captured 11 migrants who came from the migrant caravan and who crossed illegally, promising to prosecute.

Processing towards US citizenship under the law

Business Insider published an article titled: 'Jeff Sessions said immigrants should 'wait their turn' to come to the US — here's how complicated that process can be,' where it says that despite the Trump administration's claims that the caravan was violating the law, that the asylum seekers could in fact not violate asylum immigration law at the same time that they were approaching the US border.

This is because, regardless of what Jeff Sessions has said, migrants have to be on US soil in order for them to request refuge.

In relation, Sessions and others in support of the Trump administration's argument have been that those migrants from the caravan should have made their requests for asylum long before coming to the US border.

But the Business Insider article lays out a graphic that shows the pathways to immigrating to the US and points out that processing requests for that kind of sanctuary are different from standard requests made for US citizenship, once again, referring to the extensive vetting process in order to make sure asylum claims are legitimate.

Lawyers and organizers for the Central American caravan have acknowledged these requirements.

And with Gabriela Hernandez, CNN has reported that the asylum seeker was able to contact her aunt living in the US, who immigration officials reportedly contacted and told her that Gabriela was doing fine.

The CNN reporter who has been covering Hernandez' travel from the beginning, Layla Santiago, said on Twitter that Gabriela and her children had been transferred to a facility in Texas as part of her process to continue seeking asylum in the US.