YUMA, Arizona — Migrants are coming to the US now because they fear President Joe Biden could lose reelection in November and Donald Trump will shut the border.
The two Colombian brothers Ricardo, 20, and Sebastian, 18, spoke with The Post after crossing the Arizona border illegally last week.
They said they had been receiving assistance at the Yuma Regional Center for Border Health as they waited for a bus to the Phoenix airport, where they later caught a flight to New Jersey.
“We think with the elections, it will be harder,” Ricardo said.
“We don’t want Trump,” Sebastian said.
The brothers claimed asylum after they crossed the southern border and turned themselves in to Border Patrol agents in Yuma. They said they faced threats from criminals in Colombia, leading them to flee.
Border Patrol agents subsequently released them to the local nonprofit aid group and gave them court dates for their first asylum hearings scheduled for October.
Their mom, whom they spoke with over the phone from the Non-Governmental Organization, was awaiting their arrival in New Jersey.
On the campaign trail, Trump has promised to deliver the “largest mass deportation effort” in the country’s history if he’s elected in November.
Trump has said he would call on local law enforcement and the military to assist with the effort to deport “nearly 20 million” migrants.
Since Biden entered office in January 2021, nearly 7 million migrants have been recorded entering illegally nationwide and roughly 1.7 million are known to have sneaked in without arrest.
Additionally, Biden has ushered in nearly 600,000 migrants through its CBP One phone application entry program and roughly 400,000 more through a mass parole scheme allowing Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans to fly directly to the US.
Recent polling has shown a majority of Americans (56%) disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration and border security.
As a last ditch effort before the upcoming election, the Biden administration announced a new expedited asylum adjudication process for certain migrants who list their final destination in the US as Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.
The White House is also planning an executive order to shut down the border once there are 4,000 crossings each day, sources recently told The Post.
