El Paso es Ciudad Jurez y el Estado del Parque Nacional de la Nube: La Arrivaci’on Permanente

Some migrants qualify to stay in El Paso as leaders scramble to open up emergency shelter beds as soon as possible with temperatures dropping.

The mother of three children who is seven months pregnant couldn’t stop her eyes from watering when the social worker burst into tears and apologized for not giving her any money.

Like the border’s way of life, El Paso’s continuous arrival of migrants is very different from that in Ciudad Jurez, its larger sister city. On the north concrete banks of the Rio Grande, hundreds of people — many of them Nicaraguans — are lining up for hours, waiting to seek asylum in the US. The south banks where a camp of migrants were dismantled last month are where people from Venezuela want to go. Governments in both sides of the border and numerous nonprofits are scrambling because of the very high demand for their shelters.

The number of people coming to El Paso has more than doubled in the last week and is predicted to more than double after the federal policy is lifted.

We will have to work with other countries and the UN to get it done. It’s a situation that again, is bigger than El Paso, and now it’s become bigger than the United States,” he told reporters earlier this week.

The United Nations Refugees’ Refugee Policy and the Case of the Rio Grande Detention Regime: CNN’s Analog to Aguilera

The policy was allowed to remain in effect by the Supreme Court after it was announced that it would end on December 21 because of legal challenges.

“We have a responsibility to meet at this moment,” said Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, a local nonprofit that provides legal services to immigrants.

“It (crisis) requires all of us to encourage our elected officials to do more and to really take a stance in this regard. We don’t have that luxury of being able to just turn away from something. She said that people in the US need to know about this phenomenon.

The role that locals play in the humanitarian crisis as well as the harsh realities that migrant families have encountered since fleeing poverty are discussed by CNN with people on both sides of the US-Mexico border.

Many migrants who waded into the Rio Grande’s knee-deep waters that divide the outskirts of the sister cities’ downtown areas, and who were later taken into custody by federal authorities and processed, have been sleeping for days on El Paso streets. In the vicinity of the bus stations which sit less than a mile away from the spot where they reached the US land, there is a cluster of people.

For the past week, Misael Aguilera has waited outside the Greyhound station hoping to embark on the final 8-hour bus drive that will reunite him with his brother in Central Texas.

He spent over two months traveling from Peru to El Paso, but he can’t afford a bus ticket. He arrived at the US-Mexico border with no more than the clothes he was wearing.

“Traveling to Mexico was horrible, it’s an experience that I won’t be able to forget — something that marked me for life,” Aguilera said about being robbed, hearing about kidnappings and seeing people losing their lives.

By keeping the makeshift camp outside the downtown bus station clean, he keeps himself busy and also makes the camp somewhat organized and clean. As some people leave on buses, he and others collect the larger blankets some leave behind and save them for those who may arrive at any given time.

“We are trying to keep things tidy. Make sure trash is being picked up, keeping this space clean and just creating an environment where we can feel safe,” Aguilera said.

A Mexican Migrant’s Journey in El Paso, a Case Study in Los Cristianos del Intersectione Greyhound

A group of people are near the Greyhound station, including her family. A group of people have been in El Paso for a week, unable to afford bus tickets for all of them.

They spent most nights on the street after shelters wouldn’t accept them or they weren’t allowed to enter because they hadn’t arranged travel out of El Paso. There have been countless times when Diaz’s husband Carlos Pavón Flores, can only hold their daughter Esther in his arms, in silence. He wants her to be safe and warm if nothing else.

The old brick tenements located near this latest wave of migrants have housed generations of immigrants in El Paso for more than a century. A local food bank parked a small U-Haul-sized truck on a side street where volunteers passed out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bags of spicy pork rinds.

The first El Paso resident that many migrants encounter could be a 20-year-old, who used to only spend his days cleaning and restocking shelves.

He was asked if the store would exchange pesos for dollars, or if they would give people access to a clean restroom or directions to a store where they could buy clothes. At times, the traffic can be chaotic but he knows about the precarious situation the migrants are in.

“I come from a modest background and my family has taught me to help in any way I can,” Banda said. “And they are very respectful people, very respectful. The people are good, even better than the locals.

Building a house to accommodate the arrival of migrants: John Martin, a shelter director at the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, whose staff manages the El Paso shelters

There are a lot of people camping on the sidewalk near the store. In the past two months, the number of people in the area has increased considerably, he says. Some have been sleeping there for nearly a week while others arrived no more than a day ago.

Because Banda often talks with his family about what his interactions are with migrants at the store, he says his mother has started collecting blankets to donate and talking with her employers and acquaintances about how they can also help.

When a white bus dropped 25 men who had just been released from immigration custody at the doorstep of a shelter near downtown El Paso without prior notice, staff members — from social workers, receptionists and maintenance workers — rushed to pick up intake forms and pens to greet them.

The facility is one of five homeless shelters that have been either at capacity or over capacity with the arrival of migrants, said John Martin, deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, which runs the shelters.

Martin and his staff are among the dozens of people working for nonprofits, religious groups, immigrant advocates, and other groups that have stepped up to help migrants and are close to reaching their breaking point.

Martin said that staff members help migrants arrange travel because they don’t want to stay in El Paso. The shelter doesn’t cover the cost, and it involves many calls to relatives and bus companies, as well as navigating language barriers.

“We may get 30 on their way and all of a sudden, I’ve got 50 that come in right behind them. We’re never going to be able to catch up at this rate,” Martin said.

As the number of migrants increases, Martin is unsure of the shelter’s future and he worries they would have to make a decision that goes against the shelter’s own mission.

“The Opportunity Center is going to come to a point, and I’m thinking it may be within the next day or two, where we simply don’t have physical space to handle them. We will have to say no.

Across the border in Ciudad Juárez, shelters have quickly reached capacity even as more and more facilities opened up in recent months. The shelters serve as a point of convergence between people who are temporarily living in the city after being thrown out of the US and people who have been there for weeks waiting for the end of Title 42 expulsions.

The Matamoros family has lived at the church shelters in Jurez for the past six months. She had found success in selling used plus-size clothing while her husband ran a car shop, but gang violence and threats made them fear for their lives.

Matamoros says she has gone through phases of desperation and shame of being in so much need, and hopes that they will soon be processed and vetted to enter the US with the support of a sponsor.

Matamoros says there are people who waste their chances when there’s people like them who are at risk.

El Paso crossings amigrant tales: how Emir Eduardo Sanchez Mendez and his family find a room in Bethlehem

A group of families from other countries spent the morning at the shelter arranging chairs and decorations for a Mexican Christmas tradition that includes the re-enactment of Joseph and Mary’s search for a room in Bethlehem. Matamoros says it will make her two sons laugh and forget that they have been through a lot.

“I want this to end soon. It’s important for my children to have a stable home so they can go to school and have a normal life. I do not want them to suffer anymore.

When Emir Eduardo Sanchez Mendez reached the south side of the Rio Grande banks, he put down a metal tray with doughnuts on the ground and took his socks off before picking up the tray again. He quickly took a dip in the freezing water and stepped on some rocks that led him to the US.

He’s repeated this ordeal dozens of times a day, carrying pizza boxes, packs of water bottles and more knowing he can’t go further into the US because of his nationality.

A vagrant from Venezuela is selling food and water to migrants waiting to cross the US border in El Paso. Venezuelans had been previously exempt from Title 42, but the Biden administration started applying it to them in October.

We have to simply wait and see what will happen with us. The Title 42 process has taken about a week to conclude and the man who is waiting for the end of the process said that they are working on the other side of the border.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/12/us/el-paso-crossings-migrant-stories-reaj-cnnphotos/

El Paso, Texas, border city administrator and deputy mayor Mario D’Agostino said the situation has become worse over the last 25 years

He spends most of his day walking down the line of people, his voice echoes as he yells “el agua, el agua se acaba” (the water, the water is running out) trying to sell the water bottles he and his friends bought together. It’s their way of making some money or as some Venezuelans say “buscar la moneda” to eat and one day continue their journey up North.

As a growing number of migrants arrive in the border city of El Paso, Texas, officials there say the situation is “unsustainable” and could intensify into a full-blown crisis.

Many of the arriving migrants have told reporters they’re from Nicaragua. Some people claim to have been kidnapped before they made it to the border.

Blake Barrow, chief executive director of Rescue Mission of El Paso, said the need is greater than anything he’s seen in 25 years running the homeless shelter.

“I’ve never seen anything like this. … We were not built for this type of a situation,” Barrow told CNN. “We are all doing everything we can to meet the needs of these people in front of us.”

Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino told reporters in recent days about 2,500 migrants have crossed the border daily, noting that the situation is different than past surges of migrants across the border.

Before, he said, increases in migrant populations crossing the border were gradual and over a series of months. He said it was rapid over a few days.

The department of homeland security said that the influx was due to criminal organizations.

Texas National Guard members, deployed by the state to El Paso this week, used razor wire on Tuesday to cordon off a gap in the border fence along a bank of the Rio Grande that became a popular crossing point for migrants who waded through shallow waters to approach immigration officials in recent days. They used a loudspeaker to announce in Spanish that it’s illegal to cross there. A few hundred people gathered alongside the row of razor wire that separated them from the National Guard troops.

It’s not important that initiatives turn into policing because of political overtures or political opportunities, said the El Paso county judge. He said that they were told that it was a training exercise, but that it was not clear how long they would stay at the border.

The federal government opposed the appeal, and told the court Tuesday that it has marshaled more resources to the southern border in preparation for the end of Title 42. That includes more Border Patrol processing coordinators, more surveillance and increased security at ports of entry, according to President Joe Biden’s administration.

At the same time, Mr. Biden and his team have been under intense fire from Republicans, who accuse the administration of being too lenient at the border. House Republicans, who will be in the majority next year, have promised to investigate — and seek to impeach — Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security.

Reopening of the El Paso Pedestrian Crossing at the Santa Margherita Border after Roberts’s Decision to Leave the United States

EL PASO, Texas — Texas dispatched National Guard troops to the border, and San Diego businesses anticipated a wave of Christmas shoppers from Mexico, as tens of thousands of asylum-seekers at the border waited for a Supreme Court ruling that could allow them to enter the United States.

Yet the government also asked the court to give it some time to prepare if it decides to allow the restrictions to be lifted. The government wants restrictions in place until the last week of the year if there is a Supreme Court decision before Friday. The government wants the limits to remain until the second business day following the court’s decision.

The reason that some migrants are allowed into the U.S. while others are turned away has to do with the pandemic border restrictions known as Title 42. Immigration authorities have been able to quickly expel migrants from Mexico and northern Central America because of those restrictions.

Conservative-leaning states argued that an increase in migrants would affect law enforcement and health care services, and warned of an “unprecedented calamity” at the southern border. The federal government doesn’t have any plan to deal with increased numbers of migrants.

He said that hotels have been set up to shelter migrants and some church parishes have volunteered to house them. The convention center in El Paso took in 480 migrants overnight on Christmas Eve and another 410 the next day, according to city spokeswoman Laura Cruz-Acosta.

Despite uncertainty leading up to Roberts’ decision, a sense of security returned to the San Diego border crossing. The San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce said it was told that half of the airport-sized pedestrian crossing would reopen to U.S. bound travelers on Wednesday at 6 a.m. The lanes leading to an upscale outlet mall have been closed since early 2020 in order to accommodate Title 42 processing.

The reopening comes “just in time for last-minute shoppers, visiting family members and those working during the holidays,” the chamber wrote to members. It wasn’t certain when travelers from the US would be allowed to go to Mexico.

Deportation of a Migrant from El Paso, Mexico, During the Biden Term in December 2009, a Los Alamos Expulsion Case

The Biden administration wrote to the Supreme Court that the immigration problem cannot be solved with a public-health measure that’s out of date.

Rodriguez huddled with her two children on a chilly El Paso sidewalk on Tuesday, wearing a jacket provided by a local church. She and her children attempted to cross into the US once already, but were sent back to Mexico, where they were robbed and picked up by immigration officials as they slept on the ground of a city plaza, she said.

“We wanted to make sure that we were able to get everyone who was on the street off the streets before this cold weather hits,” said Mario D’Agostino, the deputy city manager in El Paso.

“We are sending buses out to their location to pick up people and bring them over to the convention center so we can free up the space,” D’Agostino said.

Dozens of migrants tried to keep warm on Thursday with blankets and makeshift bedding on the sidewalks near the Greyhound bus station.

The police officers on bicycles told migrants to get in the emergency shelter in the convention center. Many of the migrants that were on the street did not turn themselves in to the Border Patrol.

But in practice, those restrictions have been applied unevenly — in large part because Mexico has refused to take back migrants from certain countries, including Cuba and Nicaragua. Until recently, Venezuelan migrants were also exempt — but now they too can be expelled to Mexico under Title 42.

The woman says they did not turn themselves into the border patrol for fear they would be returned to their home country. She and her husband went undetected with their children.

Survivor Stories of a Family of Migrants in the Darien Gap: The Mexican Border Patrol and the U.S. Immigration Process

Hoarse from being out in the cold, she described their journey from Venezuela, and how they were separated for a time in the dangerous Darien Gap jungle in Panama.

The most difficult part of their trip was Mexico. The family said Mexican border authorities harassed them, detained them for three days, and stole their personal belongings. They said they witnessed children being kidnapped off the streets into random vehicles. The family joined three other migrants for added protection.

The group arrived in Ciudad Juárez three days before the Texas National Guard descended upon the northern bank of the Rio Grande. They watched the troops come out of the parade with their weapons. Wilfor, a 35-year-old cook who was part of the group, said the sight was unnerving.

Despite that rumor, the group took their chance at crossing Tuesday night. They chose a place that was near the irrigation canal that was known for migrant deaths. They crawled through a hole snipped into a chain-link fence and then sprinted across six lanes of highway where the speed limit was 60 miles per hour.

The future of migrants waiting in El Paso, Texas, after crossing the US-Mexican border is uncertain after the Supreme Court allowed federal officials to continue expelling migrants before they have received an asylum hearing.

“They won’t give us the opportunity to be able to cross legally,” said Rodríguez. “That’s what we wanted – to be able to cross legally – but you can’t.”

The Implications of the Supreme Court Decision to Immediately revoke Title 42 and the Impact on El Paso’s Emergency Shelters

Several Republican-led states urged the Supreme Court to step in and block a lower court’s decision to terminate the policy. The court said it would take the state’s appeal in the upcoming term, which begins in February.

The executive director of Hope Border Institute, which helps with running some of El Paso’s shelters, warned that the Supreme Court decision will have a negative effect on border enforcement and lead to more deaths.

While Title 42 is in effect, the City of El Paso is crafting a plan for handling a surge of migrants should the law be stopped, said Mario D’Agostino.

“Some people talk about 10,000 to 15,000 people waiting in (Ciudad) Juarez to cross over. It would be hard to find space if they were to come all in a short period of time. We know that transportation would be difficult.

Two vacant schools in the city are being prepared to house migrants, D’Agostino said. One will be ready to use within two days, while the second won’t be modified for a few weeks, he added.

Cruz-Acosta said that the city is unable to accept migrants who don’t have documentation from Customs and Border Protection.

If undocumented migrants show up at the government-run shelters, she said, they will be connected with Customs and Border Protection to turn themselves in or referred to shelters run by NGOs.

Two local NGOs who provide shelter for illegal immigrants told CNN last week that they were closing their doors due to the overcrowding of their facilities, even as the temperature dipped dangerously low over the weekend.

The Border Crisis: When America Turns Its Own Towards a Better America? The Perspective of U.S. Immigration to El Salvador

Republicans have been hounding President Biden for more than a year to travel to the southern border and see the situation there with his own eyes. “I guess I should go down,” he conceded in a town hall meeting with CNN in October 2021, but he explained that he had been too busy to make the trip. Last month, when Mr. Biden went to tour the site for a computer chip manufacturing plant in Arizona but not the southern border, Fox News blasted him.

I know what’s going on. If you have a solution, then spotlighting a problem doesn’t make sense. But Mr. Biden has a plan. It involves extending a pathway of legal migration made available to some Venezuelans to people from Nicaragua, Haiti and Cuba. Under the new program, they will be allowed to apply for “parole,” which would permit them to work in the United States for two years if they can pass a background check and have friends or relatives here who are willing to sponsor them.

The grandson of a Holocaust survivor, Peter Svarzbein is a visual artist and former two-term El Paso city councilman. He is also chairman of Sister Cities International, a citizen diplomacy nonprofit in the United States. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

In El Paso, we have had to learn how to work and celebrate ourselves. The desert makes us feel like family even if we’re from different sides of the border.

It instilled in me a respect for other people and led me to understand that the border is not a threat, but an opportunity and a blessing for people in both the US and Mexico.

And this past week, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing on the so-called border crisis, pushing a version of the border steeped in fear and fiction. Republican Chairman James Comer said that he wanted to hold hearings about a crisis “that has turned every town into a border town.” But it’s clear from this statement he doesn’t understand what we know to be true – that our proud border communities show the best of what it means to be American.

In 2019, fronterizos (people of the border), El Pasoans and our brothers and sisters in Juarez were among the 23 people killed at a Walmart by a suspected gunman who wrote about a “Hispanic invasion” in a hateful online manifesto, according to police.

The administration has made it harder for some migrants to make lawful asylum claims since it cracked down on border crossing and it has also made it difficult for governors like Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida to transport human beings to distant cities without coordination with local nonprofits.

Our community is at the front of the line for people who are looking for a better or safer life in the south when there is a broken immigration system. The El Paso community of compassion and responsibility is showing a different view of the border when it comes to immigration.

Some people think that we are in the middle of nowhere. But we’re at the center of North America, the crossroads of modern and ancient highways and trade routes. Every day, almost one third of all trade between the US and Mexico takes place in this region.

The city council has prioritized opportunities, both economic and cultural. Economically we have focused on opportunities for increased trade, which is why we support a public private program which uses city tax dollars to pay Customs and Border Patrol agents overtime to keep more lanes open during peak times. Thousands of pedestrians cross over our bridges every month and our shops and stores are full with people spending their dollars. This is true today and has been the case for decades.

Culturally, we understand and celebrate our unique binational identity. In 2018, El Paso re-started an electric streetcar service in uptown and downtown El Paso. The reopening of the art-deco streetcars that once traveled between El Paso and Juarez brought back memories of old times for many families and helped to pave the way for many millions of dollars of private sector investment.

Our community is also a blessing when it comes to opportunity and education. Of the 24,000 students at the University of Texas El Paso, 84% are Hispanic and 48% of all graduates are first generation college students. Many of them are Mexican nationals who cross into the country before sunrise to go to school. The only bilingual creative writing graduate program in the world is offered by UT-El Paso, a Leading Hispanic University in the United States.

I hope the House Oversight Committee knows that over $725 billion dollars of trade flows between the United States and Mexico. I hope they know that El Paso has one of the highest populations of immigrants and first generation Americans in the US and yet we are consistently ranked one of the safest big cities in the United States.