More Ukrainian refugees seek asylum at US-Mexican border

California's southern border has increasingly become a destination for Ukrainian refugees as thousands of them are traveling to Mexico's northern border to seek asylum in the United States.

The US government announced last month that the country would accept 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, but it hasn't said when the formal resettlement process will begin.

Many Ukrainians have chosen to arrive in Mexico, a country they can enter without a visa, to ask US immigration agents to let them in on humanitarian grounds.

In the Mexican border city of Tijuana, which has recently become a popular transit point for Ukrainian refugees, authorities have turned a sports complex into a makeshift shelter.

The new arrivals wait days in the shelter for their turn to be allowed entry into California. Some sleep in tents or on the floor of converted gyms, according to a Wednesday's report by The New York Times.

More than 5 million Ukrainians have escaped their country since Feb 24, according to the UN Refugee Agency. Tijuana has seen "a surprising influx" of Ukrainian refugees since the city started seeing arrivals as of March 11, Enrique Lucero, director of migrant affairs for the city, told CNN.

While he expects all the migrants to enter the US, Lucero said the American authorities have been slow to process them and that's why so many people have gathered.

The Department of Homeland Security is allowing Ukrainians, on a case-by-case basis, to be exempted from Trump-era pandemic restrictions that automatically expel migrants encountered at the US-Mexico border to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in holding facilities.

The Biden administration has kept the restrictions on migrants seek entry except unaccompanied children and some families. Those restrictions will end on May 23, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced recently.

Dozens of Ukrainian children have been separated from relatives, friends or older siblings with whom they have traveled to the southern border because of a law devised to prevent migrant children from being trafficked, according to the Times report.

The law requires US border authorities to place "unaccompanied minors" in government shelters, where they must remain until their guardians have been screened and approved.

The separations became controversial in 2018 when the administration of President Donald Trump intentionally removed children from migrant parents to discourage border crossings. The children, fleeing gang violence in Central America, were sent to government shelters.

Different from Trump's zero-tolerance policy, which caused thousands of family separations, President Joe Biden has reversed that practice, allowing entry to unaccompanied minors and some families.

US authorities haven't released figures on how many Ukrainian children have been separated from caregivers, but volunteers working with the refugees said they have counted at least 50. Up to 20 children have lately been arriving daily in Tijuana with someone other than a parent, they said.

Hundreds of Ukrainians seeking asylum at the border have already crossed into California from Mexico. They will likely go to cities that already have strong Ukrainian communities.

The Sacramento area in California is home to the highest concentration of Ukrainian immigrants in the US, with one in every 125 residents of Ukrainian descent, according to the Migration Policy Institute. The Seattle, Chicago and New York City areas are also hubs.