“Regardless of our preparations for the end of Regulation 42, we know the first few weeks will be difficult,” US Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, 64, said at a recent press conference. “We will do everything in our power to manage our border in a safe, orderly and humane manner,” he added.

Mayorkas, together with Secretary of State Antony Blinken (61), announced several initiatives to solve the problem of uncontrolled immigration. The first is the opening of centers coordinated by the federal government and managed by the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations in many countries, including Guatemala and Colombia. There, refugees will receive information on how to obtain asylum in the United States or find legal employment. Officials said Canada and Spain have also said they will accept people who register at the centres, but figures were not disclosed.

The government also announced that the United States would double the number of refugees it takes in from Central and South America. In fiscal year 2023, the United States has committed to accepting 15,000 people from Latin America and the Caribbean.

It was also announced that those who entered the country illegally and failed to pass the proper checks would be barred from entering the United States for five years. It was added that the regulations already announced were to come into force, under which persons who, during their migration to the United States, passed through a third country and did not seek asylum there, will not be hosted in the United States. The administration assured that all these measures aim to speed up the processing of immigration applications, thus avoiding overloading the border centers already full to bursting.