62,000 fighting just 1,000 immigration appointments with buggy Biden app: Verification process is ALREADY under pressure as thousands seek to exploit the end of Title 42
- The administration praised the app as an alternative to illegal immigration
- This meant that only 740 appointments could be made per day, with a planned increase
- Thousands are unable to keep appointments and there were photo problems
Thousands of would-be migrants seeking to book appointments with the government through the preferred channel and a new app have been unable to secure an appointment due to glitches and massive demand.
The app, dubbed CBP One, is part of a multi-pronged attempt to direct migrants to ports of entry and allow for a more orderly process to help amid an onslaught of immigrants that coincided with the end of Title 42 authority at midnight on Thursday.
But available places are nowhere near keeping up with demand in a week when authorities are encountering 10,000 migrants a day at the border.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters at the White House Thursday that Customs and Border Protection would schedule more interviews through the app — but these represent only a fraction of the dates migrants are looking for.
As the sun sets, migrants wait outside a gate in the border fence to enter El Paso, Texas, to be processed by border police, Thursday, May 11, 2023. The government is touting the new CBP One app as a way to do this Get people to sign up for appointments
To bring order to the immigration process, the administration relies on a new app
“So we are actually expanding the use of the CBP One app from about 740 arrivals at our ports of entry along the southern border to 1,000 per day,” Mayorkas said. He said the government is “looking at what other capabilities we can add”. He added that the administration is “increasingly making use of the CBP One mobile app to allow individuals to make appointments at our ports of entry.”
However, as of Thursday, an impressive 62,000 people had applied for those top spots, according to the New York Times. Of the 1,000 applications, only 800 have been confirmed as migrants from countries including Cuba, Haiti and Mexico try to open cases.
The demand comes despite a spate of reports of glitches in the app and problems migrants have had trying to secure appointments.
62,000 people signed up to make appointments, with an estimated 1,000 on the first day.
The government is building a network of centers to clear migrants abroad to relieve pressure at the border
Officials say there hasn’t been a significant increase in crossings since Track 42 ended at midnight
Customs and Border Protection currently has about 26,000 migrants in detention as the rush to clear arrivals has overwhelmed several thousand, and it is estimated there are tens of thousands of potential migrants south of the border.
Mayorkas said on Friday that overcrowding remains a problem as thousands continue to try to apply for asylum.
“We see exactly the challenge that we anticipated,” Mayorkas told ABC’s Good Morning America.
“We cannot control the movement of people before they reach our border,” he added.
In a Zoom call with reporters, Customs and Border Protection COO Blas Nunez-Neto said officials were streamlining the way people get slots, including using a random function for some appointments amid popular demand.
“We think the changes have worked well.” “It has greatly eased the time pressure for non-citizens who used to have the hassle of registering for an appointment,” he said.
“We fully appreciate that there is strong demand for the 1,000 slots that will be available daily,” he said.
He also said Immigration and Customs Enforcement is adding thousands of new beds as border facilities are overcrowded.
“We haven’t seen a significant spike in overnight encounters or an influx at midnight,” he said of Title 42 authority ending.