The AP has found more than 13,000 migrants on wait lists at Mexican border cities since the Trump administration has throttled asylum.
In this April 29, 2019, photo, Cuban migrants are escorted in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, by Mexican immigration officials as they cross the Paso del Norte International bridge to be processed as asylum seekers on the U.S. side of the border. U.S. authorities have been telling asylum seekers that they are at capacity and to return when space opens up, a hands-off approach that has created haphazard and often-dubious arrangements in Mexico.
The lines began to swell in the last year when the administration limited the number of asylum cases it accepts each day at the main border crossings, leaving it to Mexican agencies, volunteers, nonprofit organizations and immigrants themselves to manage the lines. It is impossible to predict how many. Migrants pick their route based on a best guess of which city will offer the fastest crossing, and which will offer the safest stay in the meantime.
Casa del Migrante, the city’s largest migrant shelter, is located about a half-hour drive from the bridge. It began registering asylum seekers and writing numbers on their arms with black ink. After widespread criticism, migrants were given numbers on plastic wristbands instead. One woman from Central America told the AP that she and her two children had been smuggled from southern Mexico to the Rio Grande for $3,000. But when they arrived in Reynosa, she says, the coyote demanded $1,000 more.
Reynosa’s list, handled by shelter director Hector Silva, has 370 people. Standing next to Harbury, Silva told asylum seekers that he wanted Senda de Vida to be a refuge from the organized crime and bribery outside its white concrete walls.When asylum seekers arrive at the Frontera Digna migrant shelter in Piedras Negras, they are given a phone number to text on the messaging service WhatsApp. They’re supposed to send the names and photos of everyone in their group. Then they’re told to wait.
“I tell everyone: Live with your telephone. Keep it in your hand,” he said. “If I call you and you don’t answer, I’m not going to search for where you are.” Obed Cuellar, a subdirector at the shelter, said a typical family stays two nights and three days before having to seek lodging elsewhere. Churches across the city have opened shelters, and advocates rely on a loose network of boarding houses.
When they first arrive, some of the migrants are sent to a Red Cross first aid station — like the mother whose 3-year-old wouldn’t stop crying. A medical staffer found no infection but said she was dehydrated from the journey north. After a large encampment of asylum seekers was shut down earlier this year — with more than 200 families lined up under tarps on a strip of dirt and breathing exhaust fumes from cars — Mora enforces a new rule that limits camping on the border to six tarps and 15 families. Those slots are for families about to be called, allowing them to be ready on a moment’s notice.
Mora knows his ownership of the list is temporary. The Venezuelan immigrant is waiting with his wife and two sons and hopes to settle with family in Phoenix after claiming asylum.“When the time comes for me to cross, he knows everything,” Mora said of his successor. “I have total faith in him. You have to pick the right replacement because the list is a big, big, big responsibility.
Some of the names have a line next to them with the word “rio,” Spanish for river, denoting that they were believed to have crossed the Rio Grande to enter the U.S. without authorization.
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