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A renewed influx would put pressure on immigration courts already straining under a massive backlog of asylum cases. Those who favor more restrictive immigration policies say that migrants who lose their cases could go underground, choosing to remain in the country unlawfully and adding to the estimated 10 million undocumented people already in the United States.

It was predictable that there would be virtually no honeymoon for the Biden administration on the multiple crises that are displacing persons in the Northern Triangle states of Central America and elsewhere, said Donald Kerwin, executive director of the Center for Migration Studies, a nonpartisan think tank.

These include the two hurricanes that destroyed many livelihoods and homes in Guatemala and Honduras; the devastating effect of the pandemic on economies across Latin America; and continued gang control of many communities, often accompanied by extortion and violence.

The Biden administration should be credited with its commitment to address the conditions uprooting Central Americans, Mr. Kerwin said, but this will be a very long-term process, and, in the meantime, people have been forced to flee.

Before former President Donald J. Trump took office, it had been the longstanding practice through several administrations to allow people facing persecution in their home countries to enter the United States and submit petitions for asylum. Some new migrants were held in detention until their cases were decided while others went free.

But Mr. Trump derided such policies as catch and release, and in 2019, he imposed a requirement that applicants wait in Mexico until their asylum requests were approved or denied. In March of last year, his administration invoked a health emergency law to effectively seal the border during the pandemic except to citizens and legal residents of the United States. Those who attempted to cross were summarily expelled back to Mexico.

But Mexico in recent days has begun enforcing a law passed in November that bars holding children under 12 in government custody. As a result, it has stopped accepting Central American families with young children back into Mexico, at least along some stretches of the border with Texas, forcing the United States to keep them. In order to avoid holding large numbers of people in shelters or immigration detention centers during a health crisis, Border Patrol has been releasing some of them to join family and friends across the United States.

Read more:
Migrant Families Force Biden to Confront New Border Crisis - The New York Times