Migrants amass at border after court ruling
Standing on his tiptoes high above Tijuana’s main beach, Luis Gonzalez waves his right arm frantically while clutching a phone to his left ear. On the other side of the 18ft-high iron-barred border wall, he can see his two brothers waving back from California.
“They made it before Trump shut the border,” said the skinny 22-year-old, a labourer from Nicaragua. “I came after them, but the Americans sent me back to Mexico and gave me instructions to get my paperwork.”
He has waited five months to join his brothers in the US, living alongside thousands of others – mainly from Central America – holed up in cramped migrant shelters in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. “Now, though, my brothers say the rules have changed,” he said.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which had forced asylum seekers who crossed illegally into the US to wait in Mexico while their cases were decided in America’s courts. The tough approach had led to an explosion of migrant camps in this northwestern corner of Mexico: in 2016 there were five, now there are more than 30.
President Joe Biden branded the Trump-era scheme “inhumane”, while critics have said the policy – officially called Migrant Protection Protocols – exposed asylum seekers to dangerous conditions in Mexico. But Republicans have claimed that it deters fraudulent asylum claims, eases pressure on temporary shelters in the US, and stops claimants disappearing once in the country.
Mr Biden suspended it on his first day in office but it remained in place because of a legal challenge from Texas that the Supreme Court has overruled and sent back to the lower courts, which will likely see it repealed.
Greg Abbott, the Texas Governor, said the decision would “only embolden the Biden administration’s open border policies”.
The border state is already struggling to cope with a record number of illegal crossings: 239,416 arrests were made on the southern border in May alone.
US Customs and Border Protection predicts that by September, there will have been more than two million interceptions in the previous 12 months, up from 1.76million the year before.
The Supreme Court’s ruling is likely to boost those numbers. Those who had been sent to Mexico while their claims were being heard may soon be able to enter America to complete the process. Many of them are in Tijuana, Mexico’s second biggest city, with a population of around two million people.
In May, new research by the Washington Office on Latin America found that at least 300,000 people have migrated to or through Tijuana in the past year. It predicts more are coming.
On a hot July afternoon, the city centre is bustling with mariachi bands, queues for taco stands and the smell of sizzling steak. But the wall looming large on the horizon gives a constant reminder of Tijuana’s sensitive location. In the distance, American helicopters swoop low, while Border Patrol cars race along the dusty track behind the beams.
It is not just migrants they are trying to keep out. Tijuana is, by some metrics, the world’s deadliest city, with drug cartels fighting for control of the supply route to America’s west coast. In June alone, the city registered 196 murders, at a rate of nearly seven a day.
The murder rate here is 138 per 100,000 residents. By comparison, London is about 1.5. It is not a place migrants from Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and elsewhere want to stay in for long.
The Remain in Mexico policy was not the only thing holding them back. During
‘We know it is going to cause chaos of epic proportions’
the pandemic, Mr Trump also brought in Title 42, which lets the Government quickly expel migrants on the grounds of fighting Covid-19, without a chance to ask for asylum.
Mr Biden has already unsuccessfully tried to lift the order, but it is expected to be the next domino to fall.
Remain in Mexico has seen about 70,000 people sent back across the border that may now try to re-enter the US. But Title 42 has led to more than two million expulsions in the same period – 750,000 of them under Mr Biden.
Ending Title 42 “is going to cause the single largest flux of illegal immigration in our history”, according to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. “We know this is going to cause chaos of epic proportions,” he said.
It is not hard to find people here who are willing to try anything in search of a better life in the US. Just last week, 53 migrants suffocated to death in the back of a lorry in America’s deadliest human smuggling incident. But that has not deterred people here.
Lorena, a mother-of-three from southern Mexico, has crossed the border three times this year in an attempt to reach her sons in New Jersey and been sent back under Title 42 each time.
“I will not stop,” she said. “It is just a matter of time.”