Migrants are rattled and unsure as deportations begin under new rule halting asylum

Abigail Castillo was about to cross the U.S. border illegally when she heard President Joe Biden was halting asylum. She continued anyway, walking hours through the mountains east of San Diego with her toddler son, hoping it wasn't too late.

“I heard that they were going to do it or were about to do it,” Castillo, 35, said Wednesday as she and her son were escorted to a Border Patrol van with about two dozen others from Brazil, Ecuador and her village in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, which she said she left because it was gripped by violence.

They had missed the deadline, and were now subject to the new deportation rule.

Her sense of uncertainty prevailed among many migrants after Biden invoked presidential powers to stop asylum processing when arrests for illegal crossings top 2,500 in a day. The measure took effect at 12:01 a.m. EDT on Wednesday because that threshold was met.

Two senior Homeland Security Department officials confirmed the first deportations under the new rule took place Wednesday, though they did not say how many were deported. The officials briefed reporters on condition their names not be used in keeping with regulations.

Sergio Franco, who clutched his baby girl after a nearly two-month journey from Ecuador with his family, walking through the perilous Darien jungle on the border between Colombia and Panama, said he was confident that he would prevail in his plea to find a safe haven in the United States.

“If we have evidence, there shouldn't be a problem,” he said as he got into the van with Castillo and the others.

As the group was driven away, several migrants from India walked up to the same dusty area near a gun shop in the town of Dulzura, one of several that have popped up over the