Mexico is struggling to cope with a new wave of migrants from the US, while even more are coming to the north hoping to cross over. Shelters that were empty four months ago now have to turn many people away.
CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico – The migrants’ hopes have been shattered by human traffickers promising that President Biden’s government will welcome them.
Instead, the United States is driving them back to Mexico, where they are waiting with tens of thousands of others to cross over. The pressure and desperation is rapidly increasing among families living in Mexico as shelters and officials struggle to help them.
In the United States, federal authorities try to achieve a sharp increase in children who cross the border themselves and then facilitate detention, often longer than the law allows. And the twin crises on both sides of the border show no sign of abating.
Near the intersection with El Paso, Texas, a group of mothers and fathers holding their children cried as they walked back from the United States to Mexico on Saturday. They walked unsteadily, leaving in sneakers after their shoelaces were confiscated and thrown away along with all their other personal belongings when they were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
From his office in Ciudad Juárez, Enrique Valenzuela jumped from his chair and left a meeting to run to the bridge to meet the families after his daughter, Elena (13), saw them coming.
Mr. Valenzuela, a coordinator for the Mexican government’s migration efforts in the state of Chihuahua, knew that if he could not reach them for help, organized crime networks trying to blackmail or kidnap the desperation of migrants for ransom, it probably would.
The migrants – nine adults and ten children – wiped away their tears when Mr. Valenzuela is approaching. The moment was one of several such scenes of despair and confusion that New York Times journalists saw on the border for three days.
“The border has been closed,” he said. Valenzuela said. “Come with me, I’ll help.” He led the group to his office near the rusty boundary wall that separates El Paso from Ciudad Juárez, on top of miles of new concertina wire installed in recent weeks by President Donald J. Trump’s government, officials said.
Jenny Contreras, a 19-year-old Guatemalan mother of a 3-year-old girl, collapsed on a seat when Mr. Valenzuela handed out the hand sanitizer.
“I did not get it right,” she sobbed into the phone as she spoke to her husband, a butcher in Chicago.
“Biden promised us!” cried another woman.
Many of the migrants said they had spent their savings and incurred debts to pay coyotes – human traffickers – who had falsely promised that the border would be open after President Biden’s election.
Yet migrants are on the rise, and many officials believe the numbers could be greater than in recent years, after the pandemic and recent natural disasters in Central America wiped out livelihoods.
Mr. Biden is now ordering the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help manage the thousands of unaccompanied migrant children filling prison facilities, after Mr. Biden, shortly after taking office, said his administration would no longer turn back unaccompanied minors.
Mexican officials and shelter operators say the number of children, with parents or unaccompanied minors, is reaching levels not seen since 2018. Late that year, tens of thousands of migrants made their way to the border every month, prompting the Trump administration to separate and close families. They op. Hundreds of children remain separated from their parents to this day.
Mr. Biden has asked the Mexican government for help in easing the congestion at the border. So far, Mexico’s response has been mostly to provoke smuggling of smugglers and to send migrants, most of them from Central America, home, according to Mexican shelter operators. The government is also trying to stop more migrants from Central America from moving to Mexico, such as during the Trump administration, officials said.
A Mexican State Department official said the government was within its right to deport illegal migrants, but did not comment on whether raids had increased in recent weeks or whether the Mexican government was responding to a U.S. request.
At the International Bridge on Saturday, Dagoberto Pineda, a Honduran migrant, looked shocked as he discreetly wiped away the tears and held his 6-year-old son’s hand. He thought he was entering the United States, but here he was in Ciudad Juárez, crying under a Mexican flag. He asked Valenzuela and New York Times journalists for help: was he allowed or not?
A massive hurricane struck late last year by Mr. Tossed Pineda’s city and destroyed the banana plantation he was working on, owned by Chiquita Brands International. After years ago Mr. Pineda paid about $ 12 a day to fill U.S. grocery stores with fresh fruit, the company fired him. When coyotes offered him the chance to move to the United States for $ 6,000 – more than his annual salary – he took it.
Mr. Pineda was transferred from Tamaulipas to South Texas, where he was detained by U.S. officials for several days. When he flew 600 kilometers to a second detention center in El Paso, Texas, he thought his entry into the United States was finally granted.
Instead, border patrol agents released him on Saturday on the Paso del Norte bridge, which connects El Paso with Ciudad Juárez, and told him to walk in the direction of the Mexican flags.
Over the past week, Mexican officials and shelter operators such as the International Organization for Migration said they were surprised by the Department of Homeland Security’s new practice of detaining migrants at one point on the vast border, only to fly them hundreds of miles. to put away. at another border town.
The United States does so under a federal order known as Title 42. The order, instituted by Mr. Trump, but by Mr. Bids embrace, justify rapid evictions as a health measure amid the pandemic. But observers say migrants are being crammed into planes and overcrowded detention facilities without any coronavirus testing.
Stephanie Malin, a spokeswoman for Customs and Border Protection, said U.S. authorities had “seen an increase in encounters” but that border officials would “quickly” relocate migrants from their custody to comply with federal guidelines for Covid-19. come.
“Trump got his wall, it’s called Title 42,” said Rubén Garcia, founder of Annunciation House, one of the largest shelter networks in the United States, in El Paso.
The new boom of migrants continues to strain resources throughout the system. Last Sunday, Mr. Garcia said he had barely 30 minutes to prepare after authorities told him 200 migrants would be deposited at his shelter. None of them tested for Covid-19.
‘I’m talking to staff members at the White House and DHS, and when I’m going, I say,’ You’re not prepared. “You are not prepared for what is going to happen,” he said. Garcia said in an interview with the abbreviation of the Department of Homeland Security.
Across the border, Mexican officials are also unwilling to deal with the growing number of migrants, with shelters at a breaking point.
If the daughter of Valenzuela had not looked up from her book to see the families crossing the border, all 19 migrants in the center of Ciudad Juárez, one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities, would have fallen at the mercy of the cartels or human traffickers. word.
The previous evening, Mr. Valenzuela welcomes 45 families with little time to prepare.
According to Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, which deported migrants to Mexico to await their court cases on asylum in the United States, communication and coordination were better between the various organizations working along the border, shelter operators and Mexican officials said. Mr. Biden ended the policy in January and promised to start processing some of the 25,000 migrants enrolled in the program. Hundreds have been admitted in recent weeks.
Jettner, 29, a Honduras migrant, is one of those admitted to the United States. After waiting almost two years at the border with his wife and two daughters, it took barely an hour on Friday to be processed and let in. He’s quick to his sister’s house in Dallas.
When he walks up the bridge and leaves Ciudad Juárez behind while walking in the direction of El Paso, he is full of confidence. “My life is going to change 180 degrees,” Jettner said. He asked that only his first name be used, for fear of retaliation for his family back home. “I’m going to a place where my daughters are doing well.”
Although U.S. officials insisted the border was closed to new migrants, thousands of people did not stop the dangerous journey to the north, mostly from Central America.
Only four months ago, the Filter Hotel shelter in Ciudad Juárez was so empty that they used several rooms as storage. The shelter, which is run by the International Organization for Migration, now has signs on its door stating that ‘there is no space’.
Of the 1,165 people who have worked at the Filter Hotel since early May, nearly 39 percent were minors, most of whom were under 12, employees said. The staff often have to chase away smugglers as they wander around the shelter entrances.
Gladys Oneida Pérez Cruz, 48, and her 23-year-old son Henry Arturo Menjívar Pérez, who has cerebral palsy, came to the shelter after being expelled from the United States late last month. Shortly after the inauguration of mr. Biden, smugglers began sailing her neighborhood in Honduras for business, and falsely uttered the word that the U.S. border was open.
Me. Pérez was hoping to join her sister in Maryland and find work that would help her afford medicine for her son.
A coyote charged her $ 9,000 for the trip – a stronger price than she expected, but it was accompanied by the promise that she would travel by car and his colleagues would help her carry her son across the border , as he had to leave his wheelchair behind. Her sister wired the money. She and her son embarked on the dangerous journey on February 7, she said. Almost two weeks later, the smugglers dumped them at the border and said they would have to cross themselves.
They managed to cross over after hours of effort, but were quickly detained by U.S. border patrol agents and driven back to Mexico. She decided to return to Honduras, preferring to face poverty rather than being killed or kidnapped in Mexico.
“I apologize for trying to enter the United States like this, but it was because of my distress and my son’s illness,” she said through her tears.
“Biden promised us that everything would change,” she said. “He has not done that yet, but he will be a good president for migrants.”
Albinson Linares reported from Juárez, Mexico.