From El Paso and Ciudad Juárez to San Diego and Tijuana, large numbers of migrants crowded sections of the US-Mexico border on Thursday in the hours before the rule known as Title 42, implemented to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Some migrants who have traveled from Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Central America fear it could be difficult for them to stay on US soil once the restrictions are lifted.
Here are some of the scenes taking place along the 3,140-kilometer (1,950-mile) international border:
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María José Durán, a 24-year-old student from Venezuela who was sitting on the banks of the Rio Grande in the Mexican city of Matamoros, was about to cry.
Mexican immigration officials were trying to move the migrants to a makeshift camp, far from a point where they could ford the river, known as the Rio Grande in English.
Durán said he dropped out of college when his parents could no longer afford it and headed for the United States with a group of friends and relatives. They crossed the treacherous Darien jungle between Colombia and Panama and then half a dozen other countries until they reached the US border.
“Right now I don’t know what to think, that is, going through such a difficult journey to find this,” he said, pointing to the opposite shore, where at least a dozen Texas state agents could be seen with rifles behind them. barbed wire.
From the Mexican side, it was possible to see members of the Texas National Guard reinforcing the wire in order to prevent the passage of migrants.
Durán was later seen walking along the levee along with other migrants who had crossed the river and passed through the barbed wire.
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Hundreds of migrants lined up along the border wall in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, continued to cross Thursday morning and were greeted by the US Border Patrol. It was a remarkably smaller amount than in recent days.
Ecuadoreans Washington Javier Vaca and his wife Paulina Congo, along with their two sons, ages 14 and 7, knew nothing about the rule change.
“And now will it be better or worse?” Congo asked. “We asked for asylum in Mexico and after four months they denied it.”
A Salvadoran who gave his name as David left the border and re-entered Ciudad Juárez for fear of being deported.
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Authorities in the remote community of Yuma, in the Arizona desert, expressed concern after the average daily number of migrants arriving rose from 300 to 1,000 this week.
Hundreds of people who entered the Yuma area by crossing the Colorado River Thursday morning turned themselves in to border agents, who then loaded adults and children onto buses.
Mayor Doug Nicholls has asked the federal government to declare a national emergency so Federal Emergency Management Agency resources and National Guard troops can be quickly allocated to his community and other small border towns.
Most migrants are transported to shelters operated by nonprofit agencies located further from the border, but border officials will release them into communities if sufficient transportation is not available. Nicholls said authorities told him they plan to release 141 migrants who have already been processed in Yuma County on Friday.
“The question keeps coming up: ‘What now?’ I’ve been asking that question for two years, with no answers,” Nicholls said. “We are in a situation that we have never been in before.”
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People smugglers helped Guatemalan Sheidi Mazariegos and her 4-year-old son reach Matamoros, where she and the little boy crossed the Rio Grande in a rubber boat.
But Border Patrol agents stopped them a week ago near Brownsville, Texas. On Thursday, the 26-year-old woman and her son arrived back in Guatemala on one of two flights that carried a total of 387 migrants.
“I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter,” Mazariegos said. “I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie.”
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