Blockade of the US and Mexico begins to deter migrants

The tightening of the rules at the border of Mexico and USA begins to force many to opt for legal routes to migrate. Irregular crossings are decreasing, but the causes of this flow threaten to once again exceed the restrictions.

“I want to enter legally,” Venezuelan Gustavo Rodríguez told AFP in Matamoros (northern Mexico), after Washington tightened measures against illegal migration when the so-called Title 42 expired on Friday, a mechanism adopted in 2020 supposedly to stop the covid-19.

Although the Title 42 was invoked to execute 2.8 million expulsions to Mexico of migrants who managed to cross into the United States, now with Title 8, the one that remains in force, can be sent to their countries of origin and be vetoed to request asylum later.

If they are arrested, they will also be banned from entering again for five years and could be penalized. The “border is not open”, they repeat from the White House.

For this reason, it does not cross Rodríguez’s mind to cross the Rio Grande, as thousands had been doing until Thursday to turn themselves in to US agents and ask for protection.

“I want to enter with the best benefits”, adds this military deserter in a camp of multicolored tents spread out along a street.

The Venezuelan does not leave the CBP One application, the mechanism established by the United States government to request an appointment and demonstrate that asylum is needed. The application is collapsed, despite the fact that Washington promised to increase the number of daily appointments to 1,000.

The Mexican foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, assures that the flow of people towards the border “it’s going down.”

“We have not had confrontations or situations of violence”he said at a press conference on Friday, contrasting with the forecasts of the US president, Joe Bidenabout a transitory “chaotic” situation.

The immigration crisis is a hot potato for Democrat Biden, who will seek re-election in 2024, and a workhorse for his Republican rivals.

mexican blockade

The lower displacement of migrants coincides with Mexico’s decision to “not grant” documents to transit through the country, according to Ebrard.

Those papers allowed migrants to move from southern Mexico to the northern border.

However, on the southern border of Mexico, this Saturday the arrival of migrants was maintained, taking advantage of the poor surveillance, although without observing large numbers.

“They continue to cross as usual and have not reinforced the presence of the National Guard or the Army,” Heyman Vázquez, parish priest of Tapachula, in the southern state of Chiapas, on the border with Guatemala, told AFP. The priest helps foreigners with food.

Last Thursday, the immigration authorities closed a provisional center in that city where permits to cross Mexico were granted, for which hundreds of people arrived this Saturday in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the state capital, to try to regularize their situation in other public offices.

The Guatemalan government anticipates a “very strong humanitarian situation”since it would have to offer shelter to people who transit through the country while they “wait for their asylum procedure”, the presidential secretary of Communication, Kevin López, announced on Friday.

Among the legal ways to migrate there are also family reunification programs and humanitarian permits for Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans.

In any of these cases, migrants must process it before arriving at the ports of entry. The exceptions are few, such as if they were denied asylum in a country they transited through on their way to the United States, if they have not been able to use CBP One or in the case of unaccompanied children.

But getting an appointment at CPB One is a lottery. Under a tent in Matamoros where they cook arepas with sausages, Venezuelan José Manuel Tovar considers himself lucky because after four months he got an appointment. “I cried, my family, all the colleagues cried with joy”he told AFP.

no brake

His euphoria contrasts with the unease of Randy Vargas, also a Venezuelan, who warns that the restrictions will not stop migration.

“We are talking about thousands of Venezuelans, right on the border, right now thousands are coming on the (cargo) train. What are they going to do with them? Too many are coming out in the jungle. The migrant will never be stopped”, Vargas told AFP in front of a Mexican detention center in Ciudad Juárez, where 40 migrants died in a fire on March 27.

Experts also warn about the limitations of these measures. “This is going to further violate the migration process, which will not stop as long as there are no conditions for it in the sending countries”Eduardo González, an academic at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, told AFP.

The situation could also continue to be taken advantage of by “coyotes”, human traffickers, who have turned illegal migration into a million-dollar business.

“The cruelest solutions produce disorder and empower traffickers”David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee, said in a statement.

Source: AFP