El Paso, Ciudad Juárez, and the Los Alamos Mexicanos: A Humanitarian Crisis Indicated Through The Eyes of a Guatemalan Migrant
El Paso and Ciudad Juárez — Dina Diaz walked slowly behind her husband on the streets of El Paso, Texas, trying to hide her defeat and frustration from their children. A social worker had escorted them to an emergency shelter only to be denied entry and within the hour, with the sunlight gone for the day, temperatures would quickly dip below freezing.
Moments before, the Nicaraguan mother of three children who is seven months pregnant, couldn’t stop her eyes from watering when the social worker burst into tears, apologizing for coming empty-handed.
Leeser’s comments and a visit from Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to El Paso this week have reignited the debate over how authorities should respond to an expected influx of migrants with the lifting of Title 42, the Trump-era public health policy that allows federal immigration agents to swiftly expel migrants to Mexico or their home countries.
More than 2,500 people have arrived in El Paso each day in the past week, city officials said, warning that the number is expected to double after the federal policy is lifted.
It is something that we will have to work through with the UN and other countries. 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 city is weighing heavily on it’s shoulders since a federal judge gave the government until December 21 to end the policy, and community organizations already say they’re overwhelmed.
“We have a responsibility to meet at this moment, and we need to,” said the executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center.
“It (crisis) requires all of us to encourage our elected officials to do more and to really take a stance in this regard. It’s not something that we can just turn away from, we don’t have that luxury. This is a real phenomenon that people anywhere in the US need to know about,” she added.
CNN spoke with people on both sides of the US-Mexico border about the harsh realities that migrant families have experienced since fleeing poverty as well as drug and gang violence in their home countries, and the role that some locals play in the humanitarian crisis.
Some migrants who waded into the Rio Grande’s knee-deep waters that divide the sister city’s downtown areas and who were later taken into custody by federal authorities and processed have been sleeping on El Paso streets. They’ve clustered in the vicinity of bus stations that sit less than half a mile away from the very spot where they reached US land.
For the past week, Misael was waiting outside of the Greyhound station in hopes of catching a bus to Central Texas with his brother.
He has been traveling from Peru to El Paso for more than two months but can’t afford a bus ticket. He arrived at the US-Mexico border with no more than the clothes he was wearing.
Being robbed, hearing about kidnappings and seeing people dying in Mexico marked a point in my life that I won’t be able to forget.
In Cuba, Aguilera was a nurse specialist and he kept himself busy by maintaining a camp outside the bus station. He and others gather the bigger blankets that people leave behind on buses to be used by those that 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.
El Paso: Crossing the Border Patrol Stations with Migrants and Reaj-CNN Photographs, a Memorino for a Mexican Family
Her family, sister’s family, and others are near the Greyhound station. A group of people, including adults and their children, who have been in El Paso for about a week, are unable to afford bus tickets for each of them.
After shelters wouldn’t accept all of them, they spent most nights on the streets because they were afraid of being separated. 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 to keep her warm if nothing else.
There is a convenience store and gas station by the edge of downtown El Paso. The building, located next to a bus station and two blocks from a Greyhound station, was the first stop for many migrants after they were released from Border Patrol custody.
The 20-year-old, a resident of El Paso, is not a government official and may be the first person in El Paso who is not a migrant.
Some people question if the store would be willing to exchange pesos for dollars if they were to sell sim cards, for access to a clean bathroom, or for a store where they could buy clothes. At times, the traffic can bectic, but he understands the precarious situation that migrants are in.
“My family has taught me to help in any way that I can and I have come from a modest background,” he said. “And they are very respectful people, very respectful. They are good people, even better than some locals.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/12/us/el-paso-crossings-migrant-stories-reaj-cnnphotos/
The El Paso homeless shelters — a crossroads from a Mexican border city to Central America? John Martin, an attorney for the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, whose work in Ciudad Jurez
A few feet away from the store, dozens of people are camping on the sidewalk. He says the number of people in the area has gone up. Some have been sleeping there for nearly a week while others arrived no more than a day ago.
Because he talks to his family about how he interacts with migrants at the store, his mother began collecting blankets to donate to acquaintances and employers who could also help.
Staff members from social workers, receptionists, and maintenance workers rushed to pick up intake forms and pens for 25 men who had just been released from immigration custody at the doorstep of a shelter in El Paso without prior notice.
John Martin is a deputy director of the Opportunity Center for the Homeless, which runs the five homeless shelters that are over capacity with the arrival of migrants.
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.
According to the news release, mass shelter facilities would provide essential services such as food, toilets, showers and transportation to accommodate up to 2,000 people. The Red Cross will also be on hand to help as needed, city officials said. The city has an airport that is used to shelter migrants who have tickets for other destinations in the United States.
“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 days pass and the number of migrants continues increasing, Martin is unsure of the shelter’s future and says he worries they would have to make a decision that goes against the shelter’s very own mission.
The Opportunity Center may be located in the next day or two since we don’t have a lot of space to handle them. We’re going to have to say no.
Shelters in Ciudad Jurez have quickly reached capacity as more and more facilities have opened up in recent months. The shelters serve as a point of convergence between the people who have been temporarily living in this border city for a long time after seeking asylum in the US, and the people who have recently arrived at the border from Mexico.
Matamoros and her family have been living at a shelter for homeless people in JuRES for nearly six months. She says that gang violence, extortion and threats made her and her husband afraid for their lives as well as their children’s.
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 “you want to know why other people are crossing and not, why others have that opportunity and why there are people who waste their chances when there’s people like us who are at risk.”
El Paso Crossings of Migrant Stories: Carlos Carlos Matamoros, Jorge Rodriguez, and the Biden Term for Title 42
The families who traveled from other parts of Mexico, Guatemalan and Ukraine made their way to the shelter on Christmas morning to put up chairs, hang up Christmas lights and cook for a Mexican Christmas tradition called a posada. Matamoros says it will make her two sons laugh and forget about the demoralizing journey.
I hope this ends soon. I want a stable home for my children so they go to school, have a normal life, go to bed whenever they want and play or watch TV. I want them not to suffer anymore.
When he got to the south side of the Rio Grande banks, he took off his socks and put down a metal tray that contained doughnuts on the ground. In a matter of seconds, he managed to dip his feet in the freezing water and step on a series of rocks that led him to US land without dropping the tray.
He knows he cannot go further into the US due to his nationality, and he’s been doing this many times a day.
There is a person selling food and water next to the border wall in El Paso. The Biden administration started applyingTitle 42 to Venezuela in October, after they were previously exempt.
It’s our time to wait and see what happens. In the meantime, we work on this side of the border to survive,” said Sanchez Mendez, who has been in Juárez for about a week waiting for the end of Title 42.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2022/12/us/el-paso-crossings-migrant-stories-reaj-cnnphotos/
El Paso, Texas, Border City During the Interaction Between a Mexican City and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security: A Tale of Two Lives
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 money or as some people in Venezuela say “buscar la moneda”, to eat one day and 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 told reporters they were from Central America. Some have said they were victims of kidnapping before making 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 before. We were not built for this type of a situation,” Barrow told CNN. We’re doing everything we can to help the people in front of us.
D’Agostino told reporters that the situation at the border is different than it has been in the past.
Before, he said, increases in migrant populations crossing the border were gradual and over a series of months. This time, he said, it has been rapid and over a few days.
The Department of Homeland Security says it’s deployed additional agents to the region, claiming that criminal smuggling organizations are behind the influx.
Texas is sending 400 National Guard personnel to the border city because of a state of emergency. Leeser said the declaration was aimed largely at protecting vulnerable migrants, while a statement from the Texas National Guard said the deployment included forces used to “repel and turn-back illegal immigrants.”
“I do not want these initiatives to turn into policing simply because of political overtures or political opportunities,” said Ricardo Samaniego, the El Paso county judge. He was told the show of force would be a training exercise, but it was unclear how long the group would stay at the border.
In Washington, the debate over the use of the Title 42 restrictions has helped to highlight the administration’s difficulty in making good on President Biden’s promise of border policies that are both secure and humane. Immigration advocates have criticized officials for relying too heavily on the Trump administration’s policies, as they struggled to respond to historic levels of migration.
Republicans accuse the administration of being too soft at the border and they have been under intense criticism from Mr. Biden and his team. The House Republicans, who will be in control of the house next year, want to impeach Alejandro N Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security.
Deputy Chief Justice John Roberts’s Order to End the Mexican Pandemic-Era Border Limits with a Short Delay
Over the weekend, Texas sent National Guard troops to the border and San Diego businesses had anticipated a wave of Christmas shoppers from Mexico, as tens of thousands of asylum-seekers at the border waited for a ruling from the Supreme Court.
The U.S. government asked the Supreme Court not to lift the limits before Christmas, in a filing a day after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order to keep the pandemic-era restrictions in place. They were supposed to be expired before Roberts issued that order.
Mexico has agreed to take in people from countries like Costa Rica, Honduras and El Salvador, but this has led to Title 42’s disproportionately affecting people from those countries.
The federal government also asked the court to reject a last-minute effort by a group of conservative-leaning states to maintain the measure. It acknowledged that ending the restrictions will likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings,” but said the solution is not to extend the rule indefinitely.
The mayor of El Paso warned that shelters in Ciudad Jurguz were full because of 20,000 migrants preparing to cross into the U.S.
Despite some uncertainty, a sense of normality returned to the busiest border crossing in the country. San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce said it was told that half of the airport-sized pedestrian crossing would be reopened to U.S. bound travelers on Wednesday at 6 a.m. The lanes, which lead to an upscale outlet mall, have been closed to almost all migrants since early 2020 to accommodate Title 42 processing.
The chamber wrote to their members “just in time for last-minute shoppers, visiting family members and those working during the holidays.” It said it didn’t know when the area would reopen to travelers going to Mexico from the United States.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/12/21/1144617132/the-u-s-asks-court-to-end-asylum-limits-with-a-short-delay
Implications of the Biden immigration proposal for the United States and its relation with the immigration policy in the post-Newtonian era
The Biden administration told the Supreme Court that the solution to the immigration problem was not to extend indefinitely a public-health measure.