As the migrant caravan reaches the U.S. border Sunday afternoon seeking asylum some have already been illegally smuggled into the U.S., potentially at the urging and support of immigration activists, according to reports.
It is leading to a showdown with border inspectors at San Diego's San Ysidro border crossing, damaging an arguably justifiable humanitarian effort with potentially unlawful immigration and political activism against the Trump administration, according to Fox News.
"Individuals of the 'caravan' seeking asylum or other similar claims should seek protections in the first safe country they enter, including Mexico," Customs and Border Protection Chief Patrol Agent Rodney Scott said in a statement, the Los Angeles Times reported.
"To anyone that is associated with this caravan, think before you act. If anyone has encouraged you to illegally enter the United States, or make any false statements to U.S. government officials, they are giving you bad advice and they are placing you and your family at risk."
Scott's statement outlined incidents such as a pregnant woman being caught trying to enter the U.S. through a notorious "human and drug smuggling" channel.
"In several of these incidents, children as young as 4 years old, and in one case a pregnant female, were detected entering the United States illegally through a dark, treacherous canyon that is notorious for human and drug smuggling," Scott wrote, per Fox News. "As a father myself, I find it unconscionable that anyone would expose a child to these dangerous conditions."
The Times report included Americans willing to take in migrants from the caravan, such as Showing Up for Racial Justice co-director Heather Cronk's effort to coordinate volunteer sponsors for those seeking political asylum.
"I think this is 100 percent about who we want to be as a nation," she told the Times. "Not only are we providing material support, supporting those who are in need of a place to go . . . We offer a counter message. We want to make very clear to the folks who are in the caravan and those across the country that Trump's voice is not the only voice in this country. Where Trump closes doors, we open them."
The resistance to the Trump administration has exacerbated this particular caravan, according to CNN.
U.S. immigration lawyers are telling Central Americans in the caravan they face detention for many months and possible separation from their children.
"We are the bearers of horrible news," Los Angeles lawyer Nora Phillips said during a break from legal workshops for the migrants at three Tijuana locations where about 20 lawyers gave free information and advice. "That's what good attorneys are for."
President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet have been tracking the caravan, calling it a threat to the United States since it started March 25 in the Mexican city of Tapachula, near the Guatemala border. They have promised a stern, swift response.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions called the caravan "a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system," pledging to send more immigration judges to the border to resolve cases if needed.
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said asylum claims will be resolved "efficiently and expeditiously" but said the asylum-seekers should seek it in the first safe country they reach, including Mexico.
Any asylum seekers making false claims to U.S. authorities could be prosecuted as could anyone who assists or coaches immigrants on making false claims, Nielsen said.
Administration officials and their allies claim asylum fraud is growing and that many who seek it are coached on how to do so.
Kenia Elizabeth Avila, 35, appeared shaken after the volunteer attorneys told her Friday that temperatures may be cold in temporary holding cells and that she could be separated from her three children, ages 10, 9 and 4.
But she in said an interview that returning to her native El Salvador would be worse. She fled for reasons she declined to discuss.
"If they're going to separate us for a few days, that's better than getting myself killed in my country," she said.
The San Ysidro crossing, which admits about 75,000 people a day into the country, may be unable to take asylum-seekers if it faces too many at once, forcing people to wait in Mexico until it has more room, according to Pete Flores, U.S. Customs and Border Protection's San Diego field office director. Flores said earlier this month that the port can hold about 300 people temporarily.
The lawyers who went to Tijuana denied coaching any of the roughly 400 people in the caravan who recently arrived in Tijuana, camping out in shelters near some of the city's seedier bars and bordellos.
Some migrants received one-on-one counseling to assess the merits of their cases and groups of the migrants with their children playing nearby were told how asylum works in the U.S.
Asylum-seekers are typically held up to three days at the border and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. If they pass an asylum officer's initial screening, they may be detained or released with ankle monitors.
Nearly 80 percent of asylum-seekers passed the initial screening from October through December, the latest numbers available, but few are likely to eventually win asylum.
Mexicans fared worst among the 10 countries that sent the largest numbers of U.S. asylum seekers from 2012 to 2017, with a denial rate of 88 percent, according to asylum outcome records tracked by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Action Clearinghouse. El Salvadorans were close behind with a 79 percent denial rate, followed by Hondurans at 78 percent and Guatemalans at 75 percent.
Evelyn Wiese, a San Francisco immigration attorney, said she tried to make migrants more comfortable sharing memories of the dangers they faced in their homelands.
"It's really scary to tell these experiences to a stranger," Wiese said after counseling a visibly shaken Guatemalan woman at an art gallery in a building that used to house a drug smuggling tunnel into San Diego. "The next time she tells her story will be easier."
Nefi Hernandez, who planned to seek asylum with his wife and infant daughter was born on the journey through Mexico, worried he could be kept in custody away from his daughter. But his spirits lifted when he learned he might be released with an ankle bracelet.
Hernandez, 24, said a gang in his hometown of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, threatened to kill him and his family if he did not sell drugs.
Jose Cazares, 31, said he faced death threats in the northern Honduran city of Yoro because a gang member suspected of killing the mother of his children learned one of Cazares' sons reported the crime to police.
"One can always make up for lost time with a child, but if they kill him, you can't," he said outside his dome-shaped tent in a migrant shelter near the imposing U.S. border barriers separating San Diego from Tijuana.
Material from the Associated Press was used in compiling this report.
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