" The problem facing the administration is that many of the migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala and seeking asylum, which calls at a minimum for a “credible fear” interview. If officials determine that a migrant’s credible-fear claims are valid, they can have him or her stay in ice custody until their hearings, where a judge will ultimately make the final decision on their claim, or be released until their hearing date, which can take months, if not years, given backlogs in the immigration courts. (The United States is obligated, under the Refugee Act of 1980, to offer protection to those who qualify as refugees, including asylum seekers.)
“This population is not trying to evade capture at the border,” said John Sandweg, who served as a counselor to then-Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and as the acting director of ice from 2013 to 2014. “These people are surrendering when they cross the border.” This is a stark difference from pre-2014, when largely Mexican nationals were trying to evade U.S. officials when crossing the border, Sandweg noted.
Now that the Trump administration is no longer separating migrant children from their parents, it has run headlong into another legal impediment: a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores agreement, which says that children cannot be kept in immigration detention for longer than 20 days. Administration officials have taken steps to withdraw from the agreement without effect. So for now, they have no choice but to release families seeking asylum before the 20 days have run out, leaving migrants waiting for their hearing dates stuck in Arizona and other locales along the border with a process Trump loathes and has denigrated as “catch and release.”"
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/10/trump-has-no-easy-way-halt-latin-american-caravan/573613/
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