Migrant shelter with lots of empty beds. Soup kitchen with spare food. Soldiers patrol intersections where migrant families used to ask for change.
In Ciudad Juárez and other Mexican cities along the border, the story is the same: Instead of skyrocketing as elected officials and immigration advocates have warned, the number of migrants trying to enter The US fell sharply after the expiration in May. border restrictions during the pandemic.
The scenes of relative calm that were unusually calm stem from a series of actions the Biden administration has taken, such as imposing tougher penalties on those who cross the border illegally, in an attempt to reverse the lanes. waves of migrants trying to reach the United States.
But it is also the result of tough steps Mexico has taken to prevent migrants from gathering along the border, including transporting them to places deep in the interior of the country.
Mexico’s strategy mirrors the country’s emergence as an enforcer of U.S. immigration policies, often acting in tandem while taking its own steps to border control, as cities The north of the country has struggled to accommodate and feed large numbers of migrants. The extreme conditions have attracted global attention after the terrible fire in March at a Juárez migrant detention center that left dozens dead.
Emphasizing easing pressure on border cities, Mexican immigration authorities in Juárez recently dismantled a camp set up following a deadly fire.
Site opened to 240 people in May, only 80 this month after many migrants scheduled appointments with US border officials at ports of entry through a mobile app created in this year.
Cristina Coronado, who runs a soup kitchen for migrants in the Roman Catholic church in downtown Juárez, said shelters in the city were “sold empty” after migrants could have get appointments across the border or are taken by Mexican authorities to other parts of the Country.
However, Ms. Coronado and other migrant advocates warn that the lull may be short-lived as hundreds of migrants, mostly from Venezuela, Haiti and Central America, continue. poured into southern Mexico daily from Guatemala with the goal of going north.
“As long as conditions in countries of origin do not change, as long as people continue to leave, the time will come when we see saturated borders return,” said Alejandra Macías Delgadillo, the organization’s director. again”. Asylum Access Mexico, a non-profit organization that helps asylum seekers.
She added how long the combination of U.S. and Mexican policies will remain at the intersection, but one thing is clear: “I don’t think it’s going to last long.”
Currently, US authorities have registered a sharp drop in arrests of migrants for crossing the border illegally since the public health measure known as Title 42, which bans most undocumented people from entering the country. sheet into the country, finished.
By the end of June, fear of migrants began to grow along some areas of the border, but remained significantly lower than in spring. On June 29, Border Patrol agents in the El Paso area, one of the busiest in history, encountered 654 people attempting to enter the United States illegally, down from nearly 2,000 a day on In early May.
Measures recently introduced by the Biden administration include tougher penalties, such as a five-year ban on entry to the United States for migrants repeatedly caught trying to enter illegally. and improvements to the app designed to streamline asylum claims.
But the Mexican government, which had agreed to accept non-Mexican migrants deported from the United States before pandemic restrictions lapse, has also taken steps that have contributed to a drop in the number of people crossing the border. border.
Besides transporting and transporting migrants from northern Mexico to other parts of the country, including Chiapas, the country’s southernmost state, the government has put in place bureaucratic barriers to migrants immigrants trying to reach the US border.
In the city of Tapachula, on Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala, migration offices have been set up to provide temporary permits allowing people to travel north. close the door.
The Mexican government imposes a nationwide ban enforce stop issuing any documents that allow migrants and refugees to stay in Mexico. Even permits based on humanitarian grounds are banned Ban and was replaced by a deportation order that gave migrants a date to leave the country.
Officials soon reversed or relaxed these measures, but migration groups say their effectiveness is clear. “I think the logic is to tire them out,” said Eunice Rendón, coordinator of Agenda Migrante, a coalition of advocacy groups for migrants. “Let them get discouraged and come back.”
Juárez, once the main point of departure for the United States, is now patrolled by hundreds of Mexican soldiers, ostensibly to crack down on crime, but it has also fueled efforts to assert order after a period of turmoil. this year when hundreds of migrants tried to force them to cross the border over a bridge to El Paso, Texas.
Tonatiuh Guillén, the former director of Mexico’s migration agency, said the mass concentration of troops created a clear disincentive for migrants. “There are no options in Mexico, that’s the message,” Guillén said, noting how soldiers create a “threatening environment” for migrants.
Migrants now deep in the interior of Mexico, thwarted by all sorts of different obstacles, are looking for options. In the capital, Mexico City, small groups of migrants sleep in the streets around a square in the center of the city.
Michael Fernando Poveda, 26, said he left Ecuador to escape rising violence and a lack of work, sleeping in a tent left by a Haitian migrant trying to cross the border to the US. Referring to the new challenges of crossing the border, Mr. Poveda said: “You don’t know if you will cross the border or stay or you will be deported.”
Despite the challenges many migrants in Mexico face, the country’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has tried to reframe the narrative, telling reporters recently that Mexico is “setting an example.” by applying humanitarian policies.
However, analysts say political maneuvers could also be part of the equation.
Mexico’s more stringent approach benefits the Biden administration’s efforts to improve border controls ahead of next year’s presidential election in the United States.
At the same time, according to critics of the Mexican president, such as Jorge Castañeda, a former foreign minister, the strategy keeps López Obrador from being explicitly questioned by Washington about domestic moves that civil libertarians groups see as counter-intrusive. democracy, such as trying to hobble the nation’s electoral body.
A spokesman for Mexico’s National Migration Institute said officials had no comment.
Many migrants who have flocked to cities in northern Mexico are finding it easier to start the asylum process thanks to improvements to an app called CBP One.
On June 30, the Department of Homeland Security announced an expansion of appointments through the app to 1,450 appointments per day, a nearly 50% increase from May 12, the day Title 42 was lifted.
In Tijuana, Enrique Lucero, director of the city’s migration office, said migrants in shelters and hotels are using the app instead of trying to climb over the double-layered steel wall separating the city. street with San Diego.
“People are getting appointments faster than before because there are more,” he said.
Mr. Lucero added that the situation in Tijuana was “completely peaceful” and there was “a lot of room for migrants in the shelters”.
In mid-June, 1,603 migrants were detained by the US Border Patrol in the El Paso area, according to internal data obtained by The Times, compared with 5,000 to 6,000 daily before the end of Title 42 .
But factors that have caused millions of migrants to leave their homes across Latin America for the United States, including violence and economic hardship, has not calmed down.
Diego Piña Lopez, deputy director of Casa Alitas, a shelter network in Tucson, Ariz., said shelters there have received a large number of Mexican asylum seekers. Many people have been displaced from their homes because of the violence in states like Michoacán and Guerrero, where drug cartels take control of villages and towns.
In fact, along the Arizona border, illegal border crossings are on the rise. Border agents in the Tucson area made 7,010 arrests in the week ending June 30, compared with 4,290 in the week ending June 2.
Much further south, the number of migrants traveling through the Darién Gap, a brutal forest road linking Central and South America, has skyrocketed this year, to more than 200,000 as of July 5, compared with less than 50,000 migrants in the same period last year. according to the government of Panama.
Maureen Meyers, vice president of the Washington Office for Latin America, who visited the Guatemala-Mexico border in mid-June, said it was too early to tell if migration flows would decline in the long-term.
She said her team has observed Mexican immigration officials shuttle Guatemalans and other migrants back to Guatemala, while transporting others to other places in Mexico.
“There were a lot of people moving, and no one had a clear sense of what was going on,” she said.
While major border cities like Juárez and Tijuana are relatively quiet, pressure points persist. In Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas, where shelter is scarce, migrants remain in an open-air camp.
“Matamoros is not ready for this,” said Glady Cañas, head of a nonprofit that supports migrants in the camp. “We don’t have the resources to help them.”
Reporting contributed by Edyra Espriella of Matamoros, Mexico; Rocío Gallegos in Juárez, Mexico; and Juan de Dios García Davish of Tapachula, Mexico.
