At the end of one tough journey, migrants face another: navigating bureaucracy

A Homeland Security official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal data, said more than 46,000 migrants from over 85 countries had scheduled appointments. Venezuelans and Haitians formed the nationalities of those who received the most appointments.

Mr. Termulis ended up scheduling a job interview for himself and his wife, but in a frustrating twist, neither of them were able to add their daughter to the app. After his interview, he traveled to California on February 15 while his wife and daughter stayed in Mexico.

“I cried bitterly like a child at that moment,” said Mr Termulis upon learning his family would not be joining him immediately.

They were eventually able to secure an appointment for March 8 and successfully entered the United States. But other migrants have been less fortunate and have been trying to get appointments since January, Ms Jozef said.

Recently, the app was updated to make groups of appointments available at the same time, so a family could potentially go together, another Homeland Security official said.

When asked about issues with the government app, such as problems with backing up a picture and difficulty making appointments, Mr Mayorkas said he was aware.

“There are issues with it from time to time and we fix them very quickly,” he said on Feb. 2. “We consider these and their impact on people’s ability to access the facilities we provide.”

But, he said, thousands of people have succeeded.

Eileen Sullivan reported from Washington, and Steve Fisher reported from Reynosa, Mexico. Miriam Jordan contributed reporting from Los Angeles.