On Mexico border, asylum-seekers take organizing into own hands

The process is entirely volunteer-run, and the men and women who manage The List, as the long, black-and-white notebook is known, are all asylum-seekers themselves, hoping to create a sense of order in a disorganized, potentially chaotic process of entering the US through a legal port of entry to ask for protection. The US is increasingly relying on a practice at the border called “metering.” It limits the number of asylum-seekers allowed to enter the US each day to launch the asylum-request process, to make the case that they can claim credible fear of returning home. Because of a combination of “zero tolerance” policies and a shortage of judges to hear and process cases, some observers estimate there’s a backlog of more than 1 million such cases in US immigration courts. Melvin, who fled his home in Central America last summer due to political violence, is reviewing identification cards and passports and assigning numbers on a recent morning.

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