The state of Texas has sued the Biden administration in an effort to have the President’s asylum rule thrown out. This rule makes it difficult for migrants to be granted asylum if they don’t first seek protection in another country before reaching the U.S. or if they don’t apply online through the cell phone app called CBP One.
What is CBP One?
Central to Texas’ lawsuit is the argument that the asylum rule and its use of the CBP One app—designed to manage migration following the end of pandemic-era public health measure Title 42—essentially encourage people to come to the U.S. despite not having the legal basis to stay.
The lawsuit claims that the Biden administration “deliberately conceived of this phone app with the goal of illegally pre-approving more foreign aliens to enter the country and go where they please once they arrive,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a news release.
The Biden administration says that the CBP One app is intended for use by migrants who don’t have proper documentation. The app allows migrants to make an appointment to come to a specific port of entry and seek U.S. entry. According to the Department of Homeland Security, the app is among the measures that have been helping to stem unlawful immigration since the end of Title 42 in mid-May, and it is achieving its goal, which is both to help process migrants in a safe, orderly and humane way and reduce unlawful immigration.
“This is particularly critical at a time when Congress has failed to reform our broken immigration system,” the Department said.
More details about the immigration lawsuit brought by Texas
The Texas lawsuit focuses on the CBP app but seeks to throw out the entire asylum rule called the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, which went into effect May 11 with the end of Title 42. Texas contends that according to federal law, migrants entering the country illegally—with rare exceptions—should be expelled, but that the app doesn’t verify whether the migrants making appointments would qualify for exceptions. The lawsuit contends that this is how CBP One offers a workaround to the safe third country rule. Migrants who do not seek asylum in other countries can still schedule asylum appointments through CBP One, so long as they present themselves at one of eight designated ports of entry along the US-Mexico border — five of which are in Texas.
The app is part of Biden’s efforts to create measures meant to stop migrants from illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, both by cracking down on many of those who do come, and by creating new legal pathways.
“This Administration has led the largest expansion of legal pathways for protection in decades, and this regulation will encourage migrants to seek access to those pathways instead of arriving unlawfully in the grip of smugglers at the southern border,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
An average of 1,070 migrants per day have been using the CBP One app to schedule appointments since May 11. Most of those using the app are from Venezuela, Haiti and Cuba, according to CBP, but are typically already in Mexico at the southern border by the time they use the app.
