{"id":9107,"date":"2026-04-08T09:25:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:25:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/immigrants-who-sought-asylum-during-border-surge-under-increasing-pressure\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T09:25:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T14:25:35","slug":"immigrants-who-sought-asylum-during-border-surge-under-increasing-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/immigrants-who-sought-asylum-during-border-surge-under-increasing-pressure\/","title":{"rendered":"Immigrants who sought asylum during border surge under increasing pressure"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A
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A resident sits on a bench at Make the Road New York, a community center in Corona, Queens, in New York City. Lettering in Spanish reads, “We are here, we’re not leaving.” The area was one of the largest magnets for asylum-seekers from the border, mostly from Ecuador. (Photo by Tim Henderson\/Stateline)<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The millions of migrants who were released into the country during the immigration surge that began in 2021 and peaked in 2023 caused a political firestorm when Republican states transported them to Democratic cities. Now, according to a new analysis, many of them are back working in the states that expelled them.<\/p>\n

Many of the migrants turned themselves in to immigration officials when they entered the United States illegally, but avoided immediate removal by claiming a \u201ccredible fear\u201d of persecution or torture <\/a>if they returned home, giving them the right to seek asylum. It can take years to receive an asylum hearing. Others seeking asylum arrived with appointments made through a government app<\/a> or relied on temporary parole programs<\/a> while pursuing legal status in court.<\/p>\n

Now, amid the Trump administration\u2019s immigration crackdown, these migrants are under increasing pressure, threatened with arrest and detention even when they appear for their court dates. Currently, they can begin to work legally after waiting six months, but the Trump administration is seeking to extend the waiting period to one year.<\/p>\n

A Stateline analysis of court records shows that the largest numbers of recent asylum-seekers are in New York, Florida, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Utah, all of which have populations that are at least 1% higher than they were in 2020 because of the new migrants. Also in the top 10: Texas, Connecticut, California, Illinois and Colorado. Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis in Florida and Greg Abbott in Texas led the charge to transport migrants out of state. Stateline\u2019s analysis counts only those migrants who are not being detained.<\/p>\n

The country that is the single largest source of recent asylum-seeking migrants is Venezuela, with 363,000 as of February. The next largest is Mexico (251,000), followed by Guatemala (241,000), Honduras (240,000) and Colombia (235,000). But those nationwide numbers are scrambled in individual states: Ecuadorians predominate in five states, Nicaraguans in four, and Brazilians and Cubans in three each.<\/p>\n

The influx of migrants that began escalating when President Joe Biden loosened immigration rules <\/a>in January 2021 generated a political backlash that intensified after DeSantis and Abbott began busing and flying border migrants to Democratic-led cities, putting a significant strain on their finances. New York City, for example, spent a total of $8.13 billion<\/a> on shelter and services for the more than 223,000<\/a> asylum-seekers and other migrants who arrived between the spring of 2022 and the fall of 2024.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, some established immigrant communities resented what they saw as lenient treatment of the newcomers.<\/p>\n

Local news accounts reported anger over competition for jobs<\/a> in Latino communities in New York City. But Ernesto Casta\u00f1eda, director of American University\u2019s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies, said interviews there showed more resentment over the aid that was offered to the new arrivals.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the first time in U.S. history, there were many big programs to temporarily house and feed the newcomers,\u201d Casta\u00f1eda said. \u201cPeople (in New York City) talked about the food cards they got, or the free meals, or the hotel rooms, and that took a lot of the media attention locally.\u201d<\/p>\n

But many of the new immigrants also have provided much-needed labor, from the streets of New York City and its suburbs to the dairy farms of Idaho.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll we can do is just work and hope for the best,\u201d said a woman from Ecuador, who asked to be identified only as Rosa. Rosa works in a family food service business in suburban Spring Valley, New York, one of the top five areas in the country for the sheer number of the migrants, with most coming from Ecuador, according to court records.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard here but in Ecuador it\u2019s worse \u2014 there are gangs blackmailing you,\u201d said another woman who works in a Queens store labeling packets of Ecuadorian herbs. She declined to identify herself.<\/p>\n

In suburbs as well as cities, the Trump administration\u2019s mass deportation agenda has immigrants worried. About 22% of the newcomers around the country, in and out of detention, have orders of removal from immigration courts, meaning they could be arrested and summarily deported at any time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were a lot of arrests right around here. People who did everything right got detained,\u201d Rosa said in Spanish, glancing around nervously as she worked making traditional Ecuadorian dishes like corviches, fish fritters, and a fish and onion soup called encebollado.<\/p>\n

\"Customers
Customers wait for their orders at an Ecuadorian food truck in Spring Valley, N.Y., a suburb of New York City. The area was one of the largest magnets for asylum-seekers from the border, mostly from Ecuador. (Photo by Tim Henderson\/Stateline)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Many of the new arrivals have stopped socializing and stay home when they\u2019re not working, afraid to be caught up in raids that have swept thousands of them up into detention, according to interviews conducted in New York and the District of Columbia by the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies.<\/p>\n

Even when much-hated Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro was arrested in January and removed to the United States for trial, many Venezuelan asylum-seekers stayed home rather than risk being arrested at public celebrations.<\/p>\n

Ecuadorians got less media attention than Venezuelans because they came to a more established community in New York, Casta\u00f1eda said.<\/p>\n

\u201c(Ecuadorians) already had networks, so they were not staying in shelters. They were not in the streets,\u201d he said. \u201cThey could work and they were becoming part of the fabric of New York, but now they\u2019re being deported by Trump because ICE knows who they are, where they live and their status is very easy pickings. They\u2019re low-hanging fruit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Many Venezuelans would like to go home but face even more chaos after the fall of Maduro, said H\u00e9ctor Arguinzones, organizer of a Venezuelan immigrant group in New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cMany of us fled Venezuela because our own neighbors were our persecutors,\u201d said Arguinzones. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to, you know, sneak into the United States. A lot of us want to go back. We are full of hope. But we cannot think that this crisis in Venezuela will be solved in three months. We must be patient. What we really need is humanitarian treatment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas has ended up with the largest number of Venezuelans, an irony noted in a book written by the American University research team. After initially receiving aid in more sympathetic areas such as Colorado, New York City and Washington, D.C., many of the Venezuelans traveled around the country looking for work, but trickled back to Texas where jobs were available and the cost of living was lower.<\/p>\n

Living in the U.S. with an immigration court date is a tenuous existence for people fleeing gangs and political oppression in South America and Central America. Fear of returning to a home country can be a valid legal reason to avoid deportation, but it requires legal help and doesn\u2019t prevent detention and pressure to \u201cself-deport.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately, having an asylum case is not a legal status,\u201d Arguinzones said. \u201cWe tell people to keep up with their court cases and keep the paperwork with them, so at least they have something to show. At least it\u2019s something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
\n

Unfortunately, having an asylum case is not a legal status.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u2013 H\u00e9ctor Arguinzones, organizer of a Venezuelan immigrant group<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Robin Nice, a Boston attorney, said six of her clients with pending asylum cases were detained in a January sweep called Operation Catch of the Day, and only one had had a brush with the law in the form of a year-old traffic case.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were typically on their way to or from work, sometimes just getting into their car after finishing a shift,\u201d Nice said.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in an unattributed statement to Stateline, said: \u201cA pending asylum case does NOT confer any type of legal status in the United States. If a person enters our country illegally, they are subject to detention or deportation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the asylum-seekers pursuing legal status through the courts have already been detained, but they make up a small fraction of the 2.8 million total cases.<\/p>\n

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at\u00a0thenderson@stateline.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

This story was originally produced by Stateline<\/a>, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Missouri Independent, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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(Photo by Tim Henderson\/Stateline) The millions of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kadence_starter_templates_imported_post":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nImmigrants who sought asylum during border surge under increasing pressure - WestplexNews.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/westplexnews.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/08\/immigrants-who-sought-asylum-during-border-surge-under-increasing-pressure\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Immigrants who sought asylum during border surge under increasing pressure - WestplexNews.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A resident sits on a bench at Make the Road New York, a community center in Corona, Queens, in New York City. 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