Prior to a migrant caravan reaching the US border last weekend, the Trump administration has attacked those in the caravan seeking U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who process them. The was made clear by President Trump's attorney general Jeff Sessions, who said that the caravan was a deliberate attempt to undermine US law and overwhelm the system.

But since the migrants arrived at the San Ysidro border crossing, caravan organizers have said that a growing number of American asylum seekers were allowed to set foot on US soil past the metal detectors in order to process their requests.

On Friday, according to an organizer with Pueblo Sin Fronteras, Alex Mensing, a total of all those in the migrant caravan, 228, was able to ask for asylum.

Denying, attacking US citizenship and immigration services

Referring to the arrival of the caravan from Mexico, Neil Cavuto, host of the Fox News show Cavuto: Coast to Coast, asked Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) on Monday to guess how many of those migrants were legitimate American asylum seekers. Without being one of those seeking US citizenship and immigration services' extensive vetting process for those seeking asylum in the US, no one would really know. Rep. Arrington appropriately said that it would be hard for him to tell if they were legitimate or not and that he would not speculate.

Here is that segment.

Despite this, Rep. Arrington weighed-in on what he saw as problems with migrants getting US citizenship and immigration services processing. In his response, Arrington referred to the two years it takes for someone seeking asylum in the USA to be considered and the large and currently acceptable number of claims that are allowed.

Much like sessions, the Texas Republican also referred to the system being overwhelmed due to the backlog of cases that creates the two-year processing window and the 180 days allowed before those American asylum seekers are given a work permit.

Under this process, Rep. Arrington said that it only encouraged migrants to continue to come to the US to seek asylum, saying that they take advantage of the incentives and fraudulently claim asylum.

Arrington went even further to suggest that Mexico was aiding and abetting these migrants by not doing anything to stop the caravan from arriving at the US border.

Splintering asylum seekers, contradictions

Though Rep. Arrington made no mention of it, the New York Times reported on April 5 that 'As Migrant Caravan Splinters, Trump Takes Credit and Mexico Scoffs,' saying that many people had abandoned the caravan in Mexico. President Trump even took to Twitter where he mentioned this caravan breakup.

The article referred to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto who said that the group's stop at Matías Romero was actually a decision made by the caravan organizers and not due to pressure from the Mexican government.

The dominating view from the Trump administration and Republicans is that those Central Americans should seek asylum in the first safe country being Mexico.

In a comment thread on Alex Mensing's Facebook account, however, further contradictions of Trump's immigration policy were revealed when Mensing shared an article by The Nation titled, 'Support Asylum Seekers from the Migrant Caravan Vilified by Trump.' In the thread, one person said that those asylum seekers in the US were, "not vilified by Trump, they're vilified by the opposition to illegal immigration that's growing across the country." In their comment, they also said that those seekers should, "seek asylum in the first country they came to and not pick and choose where they seek asylum.

There's no reason for them to cut in line in front of people that have been waiting in the process legally."

Here is a short interview with Mensing published on the same day that Trump attacked the caravan via Twitter, where the organizer explains the plight of Central Americans seeking asylum.

Mensing responded saying that that was not the way that immigration law worked and that Mexico was not a safe third country for all migrants from Central America. Mensing's comment was further supported by another who said that President Trump has already said that both Mexico and people coming from there were dangerous.

This is further confirmed by Trump's statements he made during his campaign announcement in 2015 where he said that immigrants from Mexico were bringing drugs, that they were bringing crime and were rapists.

Further confirmation of this stance was seen when Rep. Arrington also commented on Fox News where he referred to the threat of accepting immigrants over keeping the country safe.

Little mention of legitimate US citizenship requests

The caravan of migrants has reportedly been traveling to the US-Mexico border since late March, full of people who claim to be fleeing violence from their countries. One woman from the group has said that when they tried to stay in Mexico, that they had been tracked by associates of the same people who had committed violent acts on them in their country of origin.

With President Trump and Jeff Sessions already saying that the caravan should be stopped, there is a little indication or even acknowledgment of any legitimate asylum claims among them.

The only references to legitimate requests for US citizenship have been for those who have approached immigration services without using a caravan and therefore, not overwhelming the system.

Even with this, since taking office, the Trump administration has made efforts to reform US citizenship and immigration services by doing things such as signing a memo declaring the end of 'Catch and Release', a policy that provides the processing window mentioned between Rep. Arrington and Cavuto.

Catch and Release refers to immigration services not detaining those seeking citizenship where they're allowed to enter the US, only to disappear when they're summoned to court as part of their process. The Trump administration and Republicans have expressed the view that the process needs to be changed in order to prevent those entering the country from disappearing and therefore becoming illegal immigrants.

Trump administration takes broad and immediate action against American asylum seekers

It was reported that the caravan initially started with 1,200 to 1,700 migrants before it had dwindled down to between 150 and 200 during the journey. In the reported standoff with border officials earlier this week, the Customs and Border Protection agency (CBP) claimed that there was no more room in their facility which only held 300.

It was reported on Sunday that 50 people had been walked by Mexican border authorities to the US side of the crossing only to be stopped by CBP agents while another 50 stayed behind on the Mexican side.

On the mentioned Cavuto program, the host opened the segment with a reference to Jeff Session's statement against the caravan.

On Wednesday, Sessions moved on his action against the migrants by reportedly sending 35 US attorneys (prosecutors) and 18 immigration judges to process US citizenship and immigration services fulltime. It's been reported that most of the people from the caravan were from Honduras.

Likely, in response to their country of origin, the Trump administration announced on Friday that they would end the temporary protected status for Hondurans that were already in the US. Along with the DACA program, ending the temporary protected status is a further effort by the administration to put more restrictions on those wanting US citizenship and immigration services available to process them.
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