Rolando Herrera/Reform Agency
Monday, May 15, 2023 | 06:44
Matamoros.- At the border crossing into Brownsville, Texas, a line of tents and rubber roofs stretches along the Rio Grande with migrants who must now wait from there for the response from the United States to their application for asylum. CBP One.
Gregoris Amarista, a 36-year-old Venezuelan, says that this weekend, two months after arriving in Mexico, he finally made his appointment.
“I traveled with my family, with around eight; they crossed the river and I stayed. I mean, I decided to take my appointment and I already got it,” he said.
Amarista, who has survived with money transfers from an acquaintance who already works in the US, says that there has been a lot of confusion due to the change in immigration policy, once Title 42 ended and Title 8 began, which provides for tougher penalties, but it also opens up more avenues for regular income.
Others, like José Castro, a 28-year-old Venezuelan, have recently arrived at the river camp after spending a few days in a shelter, from where he left to allow others to rest after their long journey.
The deployment of thousands of US agents and the barbed wire fences have deterred migrants, who these days have not sought to swim across the river, but to wait.
“They are not letting anyone in. I’m going to wait because I’ve already registered on the page to see if they schedule me to enter legally,” says Claver, a young Venezuelan who is looking to reunite with his mother in Texas and who, like the rest, He tries to kill time however he can.
From Mexico tumbos in migratory policy
At the beginning of the current Administration, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador offered to care for migrants and guarantee them a safe and dignified stay in the country; However, last Thursday, he announced that the National Guard will deploy more elements on the border with Guatemala, just as the United States did on its border with Mexico before the end of Title 42, to contain migratory flows, which is moving away of his initial ideas.
The new elements, whose number was not specified, will be added to the almost 26,000 agents who already participate in the “Migration Plan on the North and South Border”, which was launched after pressure exerted by the former President of US, Donald Trump, who in 2019 threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican exports if migrants were not contained in Mexico.
This deployment contrasts with what happened on January 23, 2019, when the then Secretary of the Interior, Olga Sánchez Cordero, went to the border bridge in Ciudad Hidalgo, Chiapas, and from that place offered employment to migrants and affirmed that the federal government extended a “generous hand” to migrant caravans from Central America.
A couple of weeks before, the official had assured that orderly and safe access would be given to migrants who wanted to transit through Mexican territory to the US and for this they would be issued visas for temporary resident, border worker, refugee status applicant, visitor for humanitarian reasons, regional visitor or person in transit to another country.
The approach that the Administration intended to give was to give humane and dignified treatment to migrants and seek to resolve the immigration issue in depth. For the latter, he sought to convince the US to invest 20 billion dollars in a kind of development plan for southern Mexico and Central America that would trigger development and prevent its inhabitants from migrating in search of better opportunities.
However, the good intentions were short-lived. According to the former US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, Mexico agreed to act as a kind of safe third country by hosting migrants seeking asylum in that country for the duration of their process.
Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard denied that Mexico had accepted that agreement; however, in fact, the National Guard was deployed and the National Migration Institute (INM) was reinforced, which tightened its admission policies and increased pressure on migrants, thereby causing tragedies such as the one that occurred on December 27. March, where 40 migrants died after a fire in a immigration station.
