The Border Patrol does not dispute the conditions at the camps, where migrants wait under open skies or sometimes in tents or structures made of tree branches while short on food and water. The migrants, who crossed the border illegally, are waiting there for Border Patrol agents to arrest and process them. The question is whether they are in legal custody.

That would start a 72-hour limit on how long children can be held and require emergency medical services and guarantees of physical safety, among other things.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee said evidence presented by migrant advocacy groups appeared to support the definition of legal custody. “Are they free to leave?” she asked.

“As long as they do not proceed further into the United States,” answered Justice Department attorney Fizza Batool.

Gee, who was appointed by former Democratic President Bill Clinton, acknowledged it was complicated — “like dancing on the head of a pin” — because some children arrive on their own at the camps and are not sent there by Border Patrol agents.

Advocates are seeking to enforce a 1997 court-supervised settlement on custody conditions for migrant children, which includes the time limit and services including toilets, sinks and temperature controls. Gee did not rule after a half-hour hearing in Los Angeles.

Children traveling alone must be turned over within 72 hours to the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which generally releases them to family in the United States while an immigration judge considers asylum. Asylum-seeking families are typically released in the U.S. while their cases wind through courts.

The legal challenge focuses on two areas in California: one between two border fences in San Diego and another in a remote mountainous region east of San Diego. When the number of migrants was particularly high last year, they waited for several days to be arrested and processed by overwhelmed Border Patrol agents. From May to December, agents distributed colored wristbands to prioritize whom to process first.

Advocates say the Border Patrol often directs migrants to the camps, sometimes even driving them there. Agents are often seen nearby keeping a loose watch until buses and vans arrive.

The Justice Department, which rejects advocates’ label of “open-air detention sites,” says smugglers send migrants to camps. It says agents giving them water and snacks is a humanitarian gesture and that any agent who sends, or even escorts, migrants there is “no different than any law enforcement officer directing heightened traffic to avoid disorder and disarray.”

The Border Patrol generally arrests migrants at the camps within 12 hours of encountering them, down from 24 hours last year, Brent Schwerdtfeger, a senior official in the agency’s San Diego sector, said in a court filing. The agency has more than doubled the number of buses in the San Diego area to 15 for speedier processing.

On Friday, 33 migrants, including two small children, waited between border walls in San Diego until agents came to ask they empty their pockets, remove shoelaces and submit to weapons searches before being taken in vans to a holding station. They were primarily from China and India, with others from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Agents spoke to them in English.

Pedro Rios, a volunteer with American Friends of Service Committee, delivered turkey sandwiches and hot tea and coffee through spaces in the border wall. He gave pain relievers and ointment to a limping Chinese woman who had fallen from the wall.

Kedian William, 38, said she left a 10-year-old daughter with family in Jamaica because she couldn’t afford the journey, including airfare to Mexico, but that asthma would have made the trip difficult for her child anyway. She planned to apply for asylum and settle with family in New York, having fled her home after her sister-in-law, her sister-in-law’s husband their child were killed last year.

William said she attempted to reach the camp on Wednesday but fled back into Tijuana to avoid Mexican authorities in pursuit. She tried again a day later, waiting six hours on U.S. soil for agents to pick her up for processing.

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BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — State and federal health officials are warning U.S. residents to cancel planned surgeries in a Mexico border city after five people from Texas who got procedures there came back and developed suspected cases of fungal meningitis. One of them died, officials said.

The five people who became ill traveled to Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, for surgical procedures that included the use of an epidural, an anesthetic injected near the spinal column, the Texas Department of State Health Services said Tuesday. Four remain hospitalized, and one of them later died.

Those who became ill range in age from 30 to 50 years old, the department said.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a travel advisory Tuesday for U.S. residents seeking medical care in Matamoros.

Meningitis is the swelling of the protective covering of the brain and spinal cord and should be treated urgently. Symptoms include fever, headache, a stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, confusion and sensitivity to light. Cases of meningitis can be caused by viruses, bacteria, trauma or fungi.

Fungal meningitis, like in the Texas cases, is not transmitted person to person, health officials say. It could be accidentally introduced during a medical or surgical procedure.

U.S. and Mexican authorities are attempting to find the source of the infection, whether the cases are linked and if there are other cases, the Texas health department said.

The CDC urged anyone who had an epidural injection of anesthetic in that region after Jan. 1, 2023, to watch for symptoms of meningitis symptoms and consider consulting a doctor.

Patients in the Texas cases began showing symptoms three days to six weeks after surgery in Matamoros.

People leaving the U.S. for prescription drugs, dental procedures, surgeries and other medical treatment — also known as medical tourism — is common, experts say. Besides Mexico, other common destinations include Canada, India and Thailand.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration will send 1,500 active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border starting next week, ahead of an expected migrant surge following the end of coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions.

Military personnel will do data entry, warehouse support and other administrative tasks so that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can focus on fieldwork, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday. The troops “will not be performing law enforcement functions or interacting with immigrants, or migrants,” Jean-Pierre said. “This will free up Border Patrol agents to perform their critical law enforcement duties.”

They will be deployed for 90 days, and will be pulled from the Army and Marine Corps, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will look to backfill with National Guard or Reserve troops during that period, Pentagon spokesman Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. There are already 2,500 National Guard members at the border.

The COVID-19 restrictions have allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border, but those restrictions will lift May 11, and border officials are bracing for a surge. Even amid the restrictions, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.

For Biden, who announced his Democratic reelection campaign a week ago, the decision signals his administration is taking seriously an effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, a potent source of Republican attacks, and sends a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey. But it also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, whose policies Biden frequently criticized. Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions.

Then-President Donald Trump deployed active-duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were already working in that capacity.

Jean-Pierre downplayed any similarity between Biden’s immigration management and Trump’s use of troops during his term. “DOD personnel have been supporting CBP at the border for almost two decades now,” Jean-Pierre said. “So this is a common practice.”

But some in Biden’s own party objected to the decision.

“The Biden administration’s militarization of the border is unacceptable,” said Senate Committee on Foreign Relations chair Bob Menendez, D-N.J. “There is already a humanitarian crisis in the Western Hemisphere, and deploying military personnel only signals that migrants are a threat that require our nation’s troops to contain. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

It’s another line of defense in an effort to manage overcrowding and other possible issues that might arise as border officials move away from the COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, administration officials announced they would work to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border.

They will also open centers outside the United States for people fleeing violence and poverty to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow.

The Pentagon on Tuesday approved the request for troops by Homeland Security, which manages the border.

The deployments have a catch: As a condition for Austin’s previous approval of National Guard troops to the border through Oct. 1, Homeland Security had to agree to work with the White House and Congress to develop a plan for longer-term staffing solutions and funding shortfalls, “to maintain border security and the safe, orderly, and humane processing of migrants that do not involve the continued use of DOD personnel and resources,” said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Devin Robinson.

As part of the agreement, the Pentagon has requested quarterly updates from Homeland Security on how it would staff its border mission without servicemembers. It was not immediately clear if those updates have happened or if border officials will be able to meet their terms of the agreement — particularly under the strain of another expected migrant surge.

Homeland Security said it was working on it. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection is investing in technology and personnel to reduce its need for DOD support in coming years, and we continue to call on Congress to support us in this task,” the agency said in a statement.

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It began in El Paso, Texas, with up to 50 migrants to be returned daily to Ciudad Juarez, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because details were not made public.

The Homeland Security Department confirmed that returns began at one location and will be expanded to six others. It declined to identify the launch city or how many migrants will be processed, citing “operational security reasons.”

Revival of the “Remain in Mexico” policy comes even as the Biden administration maneuvers to end it in a way that survives legal scrutiny. President Joe Biden scrapped the policy, but a lawsuit by Texas and Missouri has forced him to put it back into effect, subject to Mexico’s acceptance.

WHAT IS THE ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO’ POLICY?

About 70,000 asylum-seekers have been forced to wait in Mexico for U.S. hearings under the policy that President Donald Trump introduced in January 2019 and which Biden suspended on his first day in office.

Illegal border crossings fell sharply after Mexico, facing Trump’s threat of higher tariffs, acquiesced in 2019 to the policy’s rapid expansion. Asylum-seekers were victims of major violence while waiting in Mexico and faced a slew of legal obstacles, such as access to attorneys and case information.

Only 1% of asylum-seekers subject to the policy were granted relief, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. About six of 10 claims were denied or dismissed, and the rest are pending.

Only about one of every 10 had legal representation, well below the average in U.S. immigration court.

Trump administration officials insist the policy was critical to deter illegal crossings. Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s homeland security secretary, said the policy, likely contributed to a drop in crossings in 2019 but with “substantial and unjustifiable human costs” to asylum-seekers who were exposed to violence while waiting in Mexico. Critics say the policy, officially called “Migrant Protection Protocols,” ignores U.S. law and international obligations for asylum, which Trump called “a sham.”

HOW IS ‘REMAIN IN MEXICO’ 2.0 DIFFERENT?

Biden’s version expands the policy to migrants from Western Hemisphere countries, while Trump largely limited it to the hemisphere’s Spanish-speaking countries. Mexicans continue to be exempt.

The expansion is especially significant for Haitians, who formed a massive camp in the Texas border town of Del Rio in September. Brazilians, who were largely spared under Trump, may also be heavily affected.

The U.S. will try to complete cases within 180 days, a response to Mexico’s concerns that they will languish in a court system that is backlogged with 1.5 million cases.

U.S. authorities will ask migrants if they fear being returned to Mexico instead of relying on them to raise concerns unprompted. If migrants express fear, they will be screened and have 24 hours to find an attorney or representative.

Migrants will also have an opportunity to meet with attorneys before each hearing, U.S. officials say. The State Department is working with Mexico on locations for video and phone access to attorneys in the U.S.

Many U.S.-based legal aid groups that have represented asylum-seekers waiting in Mexico say they will no longer take such cases. Advocates are highly skeptical of claims by U.S. and Mexican officials that other lawyers will likely come forward.

WHAT DOES MEXICO SAY?

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee in Amarillo, Texas, wrote in his Aug. 13 ruling that reinstating the policy was subject to Mexico’s acceptance. Mexico’s foreign relations secretary said Thursday that it would allow returns “for humanitarian reasons” after changes and additions that the Biden administration promised.

All migrants subject to the policy will be vaccinated against COVID-19. Adults will get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which requires only one shot. Children who are eligible under U.S. guidelines will get the Pfizer shot, with second shots when they come to the U.S. for their first hearings.

During negotiations, Mexican officials expressed concern about returning migrants to Tamaulipas state, an especially dangerous area across the border from South Texas, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. They sought U.S. financial support for more shelter space but got only vague commitments.

The policy will eventually be expanded to six other locations besides El Paso: San Diego and Calexico in California; Nogales, Arizona; and the Texas border cities of Brownsville, Eagle Pass and Laredo.

Arrangements to provide transportation to and from the border within Mexico are being worked on. Migrants returned to Tamaulipas from Brownsville, Eagle Pass and Laredo may be moved deeper into Mexico for personal safety.

ELLIOT SPAGAT | AP Nwws

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