“Error 502.” A mobile app that doesn’t work is a headache. But when this app became the last hope for a better life, its technical flaws meant more than just frustration.
This desperation is experienced by thousands of migrants at the border separating them from the United States: told CBP One. Presented by the United States government as a miraculous solution to unfair and cumbersome asylum procedures, this platform falls short of expectations.
It can be recognized by the blue icon of what appears to be a customs officer in the App Store or Google Play. And like until mid-January, migrants submitted their asylum applications to flesh-and-blood officials; now they have to do it through this avatar.
CBP One, named after the English acronym for Customs and Border Protection, now represents the only way to seek exemptions from a policy of former President Donald Trump’s administration, called Title 42, which mandates the immediate expulsion of aliens on grounds of public health . “We recognize Biden’s efforts to try to rebuild what Trump destroyed. But it wasn’t enough,” says Enrique Lucero, the Tijuana City Council’s municipal director for migrant services, in an interview with France 24.
Concentrating scheduling in a single app should make asylum applications at the border safer and more orderly. Previously, migrants had to contact defense groups to apply for asylum: “It used to be the monopoly of four organizations, now it only depends on the migrant’s efforts,” says Enrique Lucero.
About 22,000 migrants received Title 42 exemptions and were allowed to enter the United States in January, according to Portal, and nearly half had used CBP One. But while the platform has the potential to make border processing more efficient, it has been plagued with flaws, structurally and technical.
“Starting with the fact that it excludes people who are illiterate or who are visually impaired,” Hollie Webb, lead attorney for the organization Al Otro Lado’s Border Rights Project, told France 24. The organization that provides comprehensive legal assistance to migrants at the border and humanitarian, also regrets that CBP One is only available in English, Spanish and, newly added following numerous complaints, Haitian Creole.
A wall of technological fault lines
To get an immigration appointment, travelers need to download CPB One, create a profile on Login.gov, enter the biographical information of each family member applying for asylum, take a selfie of each and select the arrival date… their encounter with border officials . The latter decide at the time of appointment whether they are part of the vulnerable population deserving of Title 42 revocation.
United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in Ciudad Juárez review a list of migrants who have applied for an appointment for asylum in the United States through the CBP-One application. Portal- JOSE LUIS GONZALEZ
The application offers appointments up to 14 days in advance at any of the eight ports of entry for US territory. And having traversed half a continent of rivers, jungles and police checkpoints, this process shouldn’t worry migrants. However, CBP One has proven to be a slippery wall, this time technologically.
“They want to drive us crazy with this app”
“They want to drive us crazy with this app, personally my brain is on fire.” There are thousands of comments like this one on the platform’s downloads page. This has become a long litany that is responsible for the constant bugs faced by the platform’s users. The app crashes, doesn’t allow you to upload the required documents, loads forever without letting you continue the process, and never seems to run out of error messages.
There are hundreds of screenshots of the blocked interface, which migrants send to a WhatsApp chat with 650 people in the same situation every day, asking for help from their compatriots. Too often these messages go unanswered simply because the solution is unknown. In the same way, the prolific tutorials on YouTube and TikTok to suggest help with these errors usually end with “Often it’s convenient to start over”, as recommended by this lawyer on Telemundo, for example.
“You get the appointment right away and you get the error message. And every day for three months. Of course, that puts a mental strain on them!” Glady Cañas, president of the association Helping them to Triumph, told France 24. “There has never been so much sadness at the border as now,” adds the social worker from Matamoros.
CBP One assumes that migrants have a smartphone with which to download and use the app. But it’s not enough to have one, you have to have the best. In fact, migrants realized that the more sophisticated the mobile phone, the greater their chances of circumventing the platform’s flaws. “It’s unfair, especially compared to Russian migrants, who arrive with very modern cellphones because they come from a different economic class than, for example, Central Americans,” says Enrique Lucero from Tijuana, where arrivals of migrants of this nationality have been increasing was observed fleeing the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
A significant investment to get closer to the goal
The fate of the asylum seekers also depends on the strength of the internet signal where the app users are: “Here in Tijuana there is a shelter with 1,500 migrants, imagine if everyone wants to connect! The network is saturated and it’s not working. “Everyone.”
That’s why the association Matamoros Helping Them Succeed at the other end of the border provides two tablets for people who don’t have a phone, as well as WiFi and electricity to charge their devices. “Using this application has a big impact on their economy. In order to have the best connectivity, they spend top-ups and top-ups of data every day.”
Some Venezuelan women are asking Enrique Lucero, the municipal director of Tijuana City Council’s Migrant Services, for help managing CBP One © Tijuana City Council’s Migrant Services
It may not have been as difficult for 25-year-old Gregori José as it is for less tech-savvy travelers. Despite this, it took him a month in Ciudad Juárez to get the precious passport: “To make an appointment, you have to have at least four phone numbers, each with different email addresses, and try until one of those phone numbers advances and gives an appointment .” That was his strategy, because “if you only have one phone and it’s constantly thinking, you’ve already lost the day.”
In fact, new places open every day when the clock strikes 8 am in Mexico City. “But they’ll sell out in two or three minutes,” alarmed Al Otro Lado’s Hollie Webb. In total, there are fewer than a thousand appointments every day: “Very insufficient for the enormous demand,” says Enrique Lucero.
That means sleepless nights for those hoping to be the first to fill out the forms, as Glady Cañas explains: “Here in Matamoros, a lot of people get up at 1 a.m. every day because they think they’ll do it sooner then make an appointment.” And since all family members have to be registered and photographed when making an appointment, this also means sleepless nights for the children.
This is another rule that migrant defense organizations question. In order for a whole family to be received by border guards, each of its members must be registered, “including the babies,” stresses Glady Cañas, who knows how difficult it is to take a picture of a baby who has no intention of being remain. quiet.
Families are separated because it is impossible to get an appointment together
In addition, it is obviously more difficult to find free places for large families. Which leads to painful situations, of which Hollie Webb relates: “Unfortunately, it is very common for families to split up to buy time.” “We also have the case of many minors leaving unaccompanied,” adds Glady Cañas . With everything these children have already experienced, the separation is another trauma.”
The Matamoros social worker also tells France 24 how several mothers have turned up on the day of their appointments accompanied by their children, even though they were not registered: “No matter how much the mothers cry, beg, the agents give them back. One told me, “I even poked the officer with it and he wouldn’t let me pass.”
Amid the proliferation of divided families, 35 Democratic congressmen Tuesday, March 14, called on the US government to resolve rulings that “have made it impossible for families to get appointments as a group.”
Technology should be used to facilitate processing, not to create a tobacco system that treats some groups differently because of their economic status, gender identity, age, language, nationality, or race.
Jesus Garcia, Illinois legislator
The US Department of Homeland Security responded that it was “committed to family unity” and that more than half of the beneficiaries were families. Recent updates to the app will simplify and streamline the process for families, a spokesperson added.
Too far or too close to an entry port
Location is another problem that migrants have reported recently. CBP One only works when the migrants are in central and northern Mexico, “from Mexico City up.” Some travelers have managed to circumvent this requirement by using a VPN — a private network that allows users to hide their location — to obtain data, such as from Tapachula. However, the strategy seems to have been spotted: “Stop using fake GPS when you come to the interview, they take out the one who made the appointment that way,” warns a user in the WhatsApp chat.
But apparently they can’t be “too” close to the border either: “Lately they’ve been getting an error message in the camp that they’re too close to the port of entry,” Glady Cañas sighs.
Desperation mounts in Matamoros as the CBP One application continues to send error messages. © help you succeed
And as is often the case in situations where there is a lot of desperation, there are those who try to take advantage of these technical flaws. Both Glady Cañas and Enrique Lucero agree that some “criminals” pose as lawyers and promise appointments at CBP One in exchange for at least $200. “Desperate people are very vulnerable,” recalls Enrique Lucero, Tijuana’s municipal director of migrant services.
And along the border, despair is what it is. “They cry, they get carried away by false reports, they want to sew their lips together, they want to demonstrate so that the authorities can look at them,” Glady Cañas enumerates. For his part, Enrique Lucero warns against the return of old practices: “You start to push the pace again: swimming or jumping over the wall. I challenge them to continue to insist on CBP One that their lives are not worth risking, but some no longer believe in the app.”
Streamlining the procedure for asylum seekers at the border is a laudable goal and there is no doubt that technology is essential to achieve it. But it must be a technology that does not exclude any candidate, as required by international asylum law.