*By Christian Smith*
A few hundred asylum seekers who [reached the U.S.-Mexico border](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/world/americas/mexico-migrants-caravan-asylum-seekers.html) near San Diego this week as part of a "migrant caravan" will have their asylum applications decided behind closed doors in the immigration court system.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials at the San Ysidro border crossing began accepting requests from some of the hundreds of Central American migrants on Monday after initially turning them away because the processing facility was at capacity.
An application is just the first of many bureaucratic steps in the asylum process, said The Atlantic's Priscilla Alvarez, and the migrants who trekked thousands of miles from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, still have a long road ahead.
"What they'll do next after they go through the CBP screening and are processed there is they'll be turned over to ICE custody," said Alvarez, referring to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
She said the asylum seekers will then undergo a "credible fear interview," conducted by a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officer, to determine if they face real danger in their home country.
The interview is designed to establish why a person fled his or her home country and the specific danger he or she would face if they were forced to return. If an immigration officer decides a migrant's claim does not meet the standards for granting asylum, he or she would be sent back, though asylum seekers can appeal.
Border inspectors processed 28 applications on Monday and Tuesday in San Ysidro, the nation's busiest border crossing, down from an average of about 50 a day from October 2017 to February 2018.
Under U.S. asylum protocol, people spend up to three days at the border inspection facility before being transferred to longterm detention centers while their case is decided. The immigration court could take several years to decide an asylum case because of a backlog of more than [311,000 cases as of January 21, 2018] (https://www.uscis.gov/news/news-releases/uscis-take-action-address-asylum-backlog).
The group of about 1,200 Central American migrants started their journey on March 25 near the Mexico-Guatemala border. They traveled on foot, by bus, and atop a train known by the migrants as "the beast." Many of them find job opportunities or safety along the way and choose not to complete the trip to the U.S. border.
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/migrant-caravan-reaches-border-but-has-long-road-to-asylum).
Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama says his new Cabinet will include an artificial intelligence “minister” in charge of fighting corruption. The AI, named Diella, will oversee public funding projects and combat corruption in public tenders. Diella was launched earlier this year as a virtual assistant on the government's public service platform. Corruption has been a persistent issue in Albania since 1990. Rama's Socialist Party won a fourth consecutive term in May. It aims to deliver EU membership for Albania in five years, but the opposition Democratic Party remains skeptical.
The Trump administration has asked an appeals court to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve’s board of governors by Monday, before the central bank’s next vote on interest rates. Trump sought to fire Cook Aug. 25, but a federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the removal was illegal and reinstated her to the Fed’s board.
President Donald Trump's administration is appealing a ruling blocking him from immediately firing Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook as he seeks more control over the traditionally independent board. The notice of appeal was filed Wednesday, hours after U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb handed down the ruling. The White House insists the Republican president had the right to fire Cook over mortgage fraud allegations involving properties in Michigan and Georgia from before she joined the Fed. Cook's lawsuit denies the allegations and says the firing was unlawful. The case could soon reach the Supreme Court, which has allowed Trump to fire members of other independent agencies but suggested that power has limitations at the Fed.
Chief Justice John Roberts has let President Donald Trump remove a member of the Federal Trade Commission, the latest in a string of high-profile firings allowed for now by the Supreme Court.
President Donald Trump has fired one of two Democratic members of the U.S. Surface Transportation Board to break a 2-2 tie ahead of the board considering the largest railroad merger ever proposed.
The Rev. Al Sharpton is set to lead a protest march on Wall Street to urge corporate America to resist the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The New York civil rights leader will join clergy, labor and community leaders Thursday in a demonstration through Manhattan’s Financial District that’s timed with the anniversary of the Civil Rights-era March on Washington in 1963. Sharpton called DEI the “civil rights fight of our generation." He and other Black leaders have called for boycotting American retailers that scaled backed policies and programs aimed at bolstering diversity and reducing discrimination in their ranks.
