Jessica Leon, an asylum-seeker from Ecuador, scaled a border wall on Tuesday with her 3-year-old daughter, setting foot on U.S. soil in San Diego, hours before a new asylum ban took effect. She and a dozen other migrants from Guatemala, Colombia and Vietnam who climbed the wall immediately turned themselves in to U.S. border agents. They were directed to walk to a place known as Whiskey 8 - a dusty strip of U.S. territory between two border walls, one dividing the U.S. from Mexico and the second a more imposing obstacle several yards further north, Reuters reports. The open-air detention site has become a symbol of the chaotic U.S. asylum process, which President Biden says is in desperate need of reform. In a sweeping executive action announced Tuesday, Biden implemented an asylum ban that allows U.S. immigration officials to quickly deport migrants who cross illegally to their home countries or to turn them back to Mexico. Immigrant advocates criticized Biden's move, saying it mirrored hardline actions of his Republican predecessor.
The American Civil Liberties Union said it planned to sue over Biden's measures. Some asylum-seekers gravitate to Whiskey 8 on their own. Others who have been detained by the Border Patrol elsewhere between the two walls are dropped off there, or directed to walk there for processing. It remained uncertain on Wednesday how long the Whiskey 8 routine would continue. Aid workers said a group of 85 migrants gathered there anew on Wednesday morning, despite the ban. Like many lined up in Tijuana, Mexico, waiting to cross Tuesday, migrants who apply to approach a legal port of entry through a government-run cell phone app will still be allowed to enter.