We wouldn’t dare cross again, say migrants desperate to reach US
MARIA VILLALOBOS crossed the Rio Grande into Texas with her sevenyear-old daughter Gire just two days before the world’s attention was jarred into focus on the silty stretch of reed-lined river.
Her perilous journey preceded that of Oscar Martinez, who was photographed on the river bank with his 23-month-old daughter still clinging to him, face down and lifeless in a few inches of muddy water.
They were not the first to drown trying to cross illegally into the US, but the photo sent ripples around the globe and served as a tragic reminder of the risks migrants take in pursuit of the “American dream”.
Sitting in the Mexican town of Tijuana after being captured by a US border patrol and sent back, Ms Villalobos, from Honduras, said: “I wouldn’t dare cross like that again. I feel good and blessed because we’re alive and my child is alive. Some people have different luck.”
The Martinez family resorted to desperate measures crossing the Rio Grande after they were refused attention by immigration authorities near Reynosa, Mexico.
Migrants are being forced to wait for months because of the sheer volume of people trying to apply for asylum in the US combined with Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, which obliges migrants to wait south of the border as their asylum applications are processed.
Many cannot wait that long. On Friday, the plight of migrants waiting in Mexico came under renewed threat as National Guard troops began arriving to guard the crossing as part of a deal with the US to avoid punitive tariffs from Mr Trump.
And many migrant observers and advocates expect border deaths to continue to rise, not fall, as the increased security is enforced.
“I think we’ve only seen the beginning of the risks people take,” said Father Pat Murphy, an American priest who runs the Casa Del Migrante refuge in Tijuana.
“I think we’re going to see people taking more risks, even being suicidal, as they lose hope.”
“Deaths are going to go up as people have to find more hidden, difficult places to cross due to so much control by the authorities,” said Cesar Palencia, head of migrant services for Tijuana’s city government.
This week alone, nine people have died trying to cross illegally into the US as authorities on both sides of the line tighten controls over migrants coming across Mexico.
The National Guard sent to the Mexican side of the border this week was formed by president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in the last few months, part of his “new” security strategy to combat record high homicide rates and insecurity caused by organised crime.
His past two predecessors have done the same – creating elite, militarised security branches – with little success in combating crime.
The crackdown by Mr Obrador on migrants, which goes against promises when he took office in December to embrace them, is part of an agreement forced on Mexico by Mr Trump after he threatened to introduce tariffs on Mexican imports earlier this month.
An unprecedented number of people are arriving at the US border with Mexico, fleeing poverty-stricken and crime-ridden Central American nations such as El Salvador and Honduras.
Governments on both sides are overwhelmed.
“I’ve never seen anything like it, frankly, in the 24 years that I’ve been doing this job,” Brian Hastings, chief of border patrol operations at CBP said this month.
CBP is catching more than 4,200 migrants a day on the south-west border of the US. This fiscal year, some 610,000 people have been apprehended – more than for the whole of the last year and still with three months left to go.
But many argue the “Remain in Mexico” policy is making matters worse, not better, causing a bottleneck in border cities like Tijuana.
The thousands of people there have travelled for weeks or months from their home countries to Mexico, where they are exposed to corrupt officials and criminal gangs who can rob, extort or kidnap them. Now, so close to their goal, they must wait.
On a recent morning, some 400 Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, Haitians and men and women from African countries such as Cameroon and Eritrea all stood in line at 8am at the El Chaparral international border crossing. They were waiting for their numbers to be called so they could walk to the US and file asylum claims.
Rumours circulated that numbers to get to the front were being sold by corrupt officials – for $800. Most didn’t have the money, or the will, to pay.
After being sent back to Mexico, Ms Villalobos, the Honduran mother, was given an appointment to start their asylum bid – in November. She has a plan B. “I want to stay and work in Mexico – there are jobs here,” she says.
However, for migrants like her stuck in border towns like Tijuana, support is temporary. All of the migrant refuges are full to bursting point, and most migrants have visiting visas that don’t allow them to work.
As the weeks turn into months, matters promise to get worse in Tijuana as pressure on both migrants and the authorities build, says Mr Palencia.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in a few months, when there are thousands more.”
‘Deaths are going to go up as people have to find more hidden places to cross due to so much control’