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Every weekday, immigrants’ names will come up for hearings in the U.S. immigration courts near the international bridge. Hearings are held in tent courts in Brownsville. Asylum-seekers cross into the U.S., and are sent back to wait in Mexico unless their asylum cases are advanced so that they can formally enter the U.S.
In Brownsville, hearings under new program began in September. The asylum caseloads there have rapidly made this the border’s second-busiest area for Border Patrol apprehensions through November, according to the Syracuse University nonprofit Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC.
Already, through November, a fourth of all Migrant Protection Protocol asylum cases — nearly 14,000 — are pending here, TRAC data shows. About 16,400 cases are pending in the El Paso area.
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