About 40,000 migrants who have reached the US border with Mexico are on waiting lists for an initial attempt to seek asylum or are waiting for a court hearing in the US after being sent back, AP reported.

The figure, based on Mexican government calculations, represents a dramatic increase since the start of the year.

English-speaking Cameroonians, who have fled their country, helped push Tijuana’s asylum waiting list to 10,000 on Sunday, up from 4,800 just three months earlier.

Turning Mexico into a waiting room for US asylum seekers may be the Trump administration’s most forceful response yet to a surge in migrants seeking humanitarian protection, many of them Central American families, the report said.