Seeking asylum in the US? Make sure your cellphone is charged.

The day has just begun in the historic center of Ciudad Juárez, at Mexico’s northern border. Among the food vendors and border-bridge traffic, pedestrians are angling their cell phones outward, then upward, then back down again. Some snap selfies; others grumble about their faulty connection.

But this is not merely a slice of life in 2023 – a society glued to its digital devices. These are migrants attempting to take the first step, as they do every day at 9 a.m. sharp, to claim humanitarian protection in the United States.

Welcome to America’s latest tech initiative: asylum via app.

Since Jan. 12, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has required individuals seeking to enter the U.S. under exemptions to Title 42 – a temporary pandemic-era law that has been used to expel asylum-seekers and migrants over the past three years – to use the new CBP One mobile application.

The app accepts appointments from Mexico for just several minutes each morning, and while the fortunate have scored spots with it quickly, it has put others at the whim of tech, its glitches and all. Widening the digital divide, the app demands asylum-seekers have access to a smartphone, internet or phone credit, literacy, and basic technological know-how. Critics say that doesn’t jibe with the reality for many here hoping to gain humanitarian protection in the U.S. And it adds more inequality and arbitrariness into a process that for most users is the most defining step of their lives.

David, a law student in his early 20s who says he fled political repression in Nicaragua last November, is unequivocal: “I hate the app,” he says, sprawled out under a lone tree on the Mexican bank of the Rio Grande on a recent April morning.

The ‘best country?’

With Title 42 expected to end this week, the app will persist – but there might be some relief. CBP announced changes on Friday that will go into effect May 10, including increasing the number of appointments available, allowing more time to complete the request process, and giving priority to people based on when they registered on the app. These changes cannot come fast enough for those like David. 

Frustrated after two months of trying to get an appointment through the app, which constantly crashed right before confirming a time or simply wouldn’t load, he and two friends were considering climbing the U.S. border fence and turning themselves in to authorities for a chance to ask for asylum. One of them, Alex from Honduras, followed through, and says he was shot with rubber bullets and beaten with a firearm by Mexican officials. He lifts his sweatshirt to display his wounds. The young men say they fear Mexican police, broad cartel presence, and their growing vulnerability as the cash they set out with dwindles.

The U.S. “is supposedly the best country in the world, and they can’t make an app that works?” David asks. “I can connect to everything – music, social media, the news – but when I open CBP One it’s always loading? No. This was designed to fail.”

Across town in Ciudad Juárez in a migrant shelter, Keisy Plaza used to share those sentiments. That is, until she clinched an appointment for her family of four the week prior. The Venezuelan mother does a reenactment – screaming and clutching her face – of what it was like to finally see the little confirmation message noting her appointment for early May.

“I felt desperate before getting this appointment,” Ms. Plaza says.

At the Espacio Migrante shelter in Tijuana, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef) tried to impart new skills to the roughly 100 migrants and refugees in crowded rows. Know-your-rights and CBP One trainings and presentations are increasingly common at shelters across Mexico. But ensuring migrants have the most up-to-date information can feel like a game of chicken. “Just on our way down here today [President] Biden announced upcoming policy changes,” says Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of ImmDef.

After the presentation, attendees are invited to stay for one-on-one meetings with 10 visiting U.S. lawyers. Their assistance can be as basic as taking a photo of the person trying to register on the app and uploading it. Others need translation help – CBP One is only available in English, Spanish, and Haitian Creole. The simplicity of some of the questions and roadblocks underscores just how complicated relying on a digital app for such an at-risk and transient population can be.

“It’s supposed to protect the most vulnerable, but for many it’s inaccessible,” says Ms. Toczylowski.

According to the latest CBP data, between January and March more than 74,000 people successfully scheduled appointments through the CPB One app, largely citizens from Mexico, Venezuela, and Haiti. U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas announced April 28 that while more appointments will be made available after May 11, when Title 42 expires, the consequences for approaching the border without using the app will become harsher, including expedited removal proceedings.  

An orderly line

At another shelter on the outskirts of Tijuana, Belkis Rivera says when it comes to CBP One she simply feels exhausted. Her family fled Honduras a year ago after she says her husband and youngest daughter were beaten by local gangs for missing an extortion payment.

Before CBP One was launched, they’d spent 5 months on an informal list of asylum-seekers kept by the shelter, which would hear from U.S. officials each week how many people from the list could get an exception to present themselves at the border. Had the app not been launched, her family would have been up for their chance to speak with border agents next month. Now, she fears it could be another year.

“We are so grateful to be here,” she says of the shelter that’s provided food, beds, two church services a week, and activities for her children. “But I’m sleeping in a room with 800 people. I’m exhausted,” she says. “Then someone who just arrived will get an appointment that same week,” she trails off.

“I’m happy for them. But I understand why some people are quitting the app to cross illegally,” she says.

“Will we ever get our chance?”