Secret offices, weeks of waiting, calls from private numbers, non-disclosure agreements. These are some of the elements of the new U.S. immigration program called Safe Mobility, which seeks to “expand legal pathways to the United States or other countries for refugees and migrants in South and Central America,” according to its official website. The United States launched the program in June with the aim of “reducing irregular migration” and set up immigration offices in Colombia, Costa Rica and Guatemala. But three months after the premiere, less than 1% of the nearly 29,000 applicants in Colombia have gone through the North American Refugee Admissions Program, according to official figures. The lack of information and the secrecy of the project are unsettling the experts consulted by EL PAÍS and are leaving tens of thousands of migrants caught between hope and uncertainty.
The application process for Safe Mobility sounds easy. Venezuelan communicator Eliezer Briceño tells via video call that the reality is different. “It’s boring,” says the 40-year-old from Caracas. He registered through the official web portal on August 11 along with his wife and 8-year-old son. He succeeded on the second attempt after failing with the cell phone. “The site is not that sociable. If you don’t have good technical equipment, you won’t be able To quickly. You also need to have a good internet connection as the site is extensive,” he says.
The portal is currently closed in Colombia because too many applications have been received. It will reopen on October 10, a US Embassy spokesperson in charge of the program tells EL PAÍS. The available spaces filled up quickly in the two opening periods of just a few weeks since opening.
Migrants cross a river in the Darién jungle in October 2022. Fernando Vergara (AP)
Briceño left Venezuela seven years ago with his wife and son in search of greater financial and emotional stability. Today he lives and works in Ciudad Bolívar, one of the poorest cities in Bogotá. When he found out about Safe Mobility, he was very excited. “Wow! “It would be great if we could decide to do that,” he says, was his first reaction.
The father of the family is one of the millions of migrants in Colombia who can apply to emigrate to the USA, Canada or Spain via Safe Mobility. The program, which is not open to Colombians, “is aimed at Cubans, Haitians and Venezuelans who were in the country on June 11, 2023 or earlier and who have regular status or are in the legalization process at the time of application,” it says it on the official website.
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However, seven weeks after submitting the application, Briceño says he has received no word about his status. “I just have a screenshot of my receipt that says they will call me. So I’m on the phone 24/7. “I’m always aware,” he says.
Briceño’s situation is the same as that experienced by more than 28,000 people in Colombia. Of the approximately 29,000 migrants who have applied for safe mobility from this country, 260 have moved on to the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP), according to the latest State Department data as of August 28. Safe Mobility officials are not disclosing the immigration status of these individuals after being contacted by USRAP.
The wait is “desperate,” says the Venezuelan communicator. “Moving to the United States would change my life a lot. And I dare not make this odyssey through the jungle.” So far this year, more than 330,000 people have crossed the Darién Gap – the jungle that separates Colombia from Panama that Briceño is talking about. According to the United Nations, one in five migrants who made this dangerous journey was a child.
“Safe mobility” is one of the US government’s responses to the migration crisis that the West is experiencing, explains a program official. More than 20 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have been displaced by the region’s various humanitarian, political and economic crises. Many of these problems are reflected at the US border with Mexico, where thousands of migrants arrive daily, creating a situation of extreme vulnerability for them and enormous controversy for North American President Joe Biden. But it’s not the only place: Colombia has taken in about 2,500,000 Venezuelans and Peru another 1,500,000.
To address this crisis, the Biden administration opened five immigration offices in Latin America this year in collaboration with the IOM and UNHCR; one in Guatemala, another in Costa Rica and three in Colombia, where almost 70% of the more than 40,000 safe mobility applications come from. The Colombian centers are in Cali, Medellín and Soacha, an impoverished community next to Bogotá. They are operational, but their addresses are private, the US official said, to ensure the safety of migrants.
Adam Isacson, director of the Washington Office of Latin American Affairs, says it’s normal for Safe Mobility’s directors not to want to make the addresses public, even if they “make things up as they go along.” “They probably want to avoid having thousands of people outside of their facilities, like what happened in Tapachula, Mexico,” he says. Several times this year, thousands of migrants have broken into the offices of the National Migration Institute in this city, the largest on the Mexico-Guatemala border. There were no fatalities in these incidents.
In Colombia, applicants do not learn office addresses until they are notified that they have been selected for an appointment. Ariel Ruiz, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, assures us by telephone that this part of the process is in the hands of NGOs and not in the hands of the US government. This is confirmed by a UNHCR spokeswoman. “The Safe Mobility offices, supported by UNHCR and IOM, identify cases and accompany people through the process to assess the eligibility of their case, including personal interviews, with a view to later presenting it to authorities in the United States for consideration,” writes he emailed to this newspaper.
A group of Haitian migrant women and their children wait their turn to board a boat from Necoclí, Colombia, to Capurgana, then cross the Darien Gorge to reach Panama. August 5, 2021.
The job of the UN system’s two multilateral entities is to determine whether each applicant fits into one of the four migration pathways offered by the program: refugee resettlement, family reunification, a temporary work visa or a humanitarian permit – known in the US as Parole. “It is clear that there are not enough legal options to help all these people. Therefore, program agents have limited options,” admits Ruiz.
Once one of the organizations identifies a good candidate, Safe Mobility will contact them. This is done by telephone, without prior notice and via a private number to which the interested party cannot call back if they have not been able to answer. During this conversation, you will learn that you have been selected for the next step: an on-site appointment. But what happens when they go to secret offices for meetings “is disturbing,” says Isacson.
EL PAÍS interviewed a dozen migrants online who had appointments with Safe Mobility in Colombia. Some only had one interview, others several. A couple has completed the process and says they are preparing to travel to the United States, although they don’t know which city they will end up in. Nobody was willing to give his name. According to them, program staff make it clear in interviews that public statements about the process can influence the outcome. In addition, several said they were forced to sign a confidentiality agreement stating that they “cannot comment on anything regarding their process.” It’s a practice that Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor and immigration expert at Cornell University, describes as “unprecedented” and “unusual.”
The defense attorney explains that signing confidentiality clauses is not part of the refugee process in the United States, nor is it a requirement for conducting an interview at a North American embassy or consulate. “It would have to be a new procedure that I hadn’t heard of before,” he explains.
A spokesman for Safe Mobility rejects the respondents’ allegations. “Applicants are not required to sign a confidentiality agreement. We ask you to sign an agreement giving your consent to share your personal data with the initiative’s partners. This information is necessary to determine the eligibility criteria for applicants,” he wrote via email.
However, when asked about these agreements, UNHCR does not deny them. “The relocation process requires confidentiality as these are people in need of international protection,” explains a spokesman for the organization.
The migrants assure that the uncertainty does not end after they sign the supposed confidentiality agreement and end the interview. Anyone who is rejected will receive an email about it. The rest are still in limbo, waiting with no end set, so hopefully they’ll get another call someday. Some will receive it soon, in a week. Others regret waiting almost a month. “There is no information. They haven’t rejected me yet, but they have invited other people who had their interviews after me,” says one migrant. “It seems like they pick at random. It’s very frustrating.”
When the U.S. government launched Safe Mobility in Colombia, it announced that it would conduct “a six-month pilot test.” Halfway through, he says he plans to expand but refuses to give a specific timeline. With so much uncertainty, Yale-Loehr admits she understands the frustration surrounding the program. “It started very slowly,” he admits.
With global migration at record levels, there is no single initiative that can solve the problem; It will rely on the cooperation of many countries and in very different ways. The defense lawyer believes that the future of Safe Mobility in this process is still uncertain: “It is not yet a failure, but it is not a success either.”
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