Cases of previously denied migrants in camp may reopen
MEXICO CITY — In a camp at the U.S.-Mexico border, some asylum seekers were told by officials that the U.S. government may reopen their cases and they would eventually be able to enter the U.S. to wait out the asylum process.
The new opening for people previously denied came as Mexican authorities worked to close the improvised camp along the banks of the Rio Grande, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, that has housed thousands of asylum seekers over the more than two years it existed.
Late Friday night, an official with Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said via Twitter that the last asylum seekers with active cases from the camp had been processed and the camp was closed. Others with closed asylum cases who were told their cases could be reopened were urged to move to a shelter. But about 50 still remained in the camp Saturday.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment Friday and Saturday.
Last month, the Biden administration began processing asylum seekers who had been forced to wait out the long process from Mexico during the administration of former President Donald Trump. The Matamoros camp was one of the most visible signs of a policy implemented in response to high numbers of asylum seekers by an administration that worked in various ways to make it more difficult to access protective status in the United States.
On Saturday, Juan Antonio Sierra, who runs the separate migrant shelter in Matamoros, confirmed that he had committed to housing asylum seekers with closed cases so that the camp could be closed.
Sierra said that the day before, the U.S. Consul in Matamoros, Yolanda Parra, met with officials from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, Mexico’s National Immigration Institute, Sierra and some migrants. She agreed that the U.S. government would evaluate the possible reopening of closed cases for the people who remained in the camp, Sierra said.
The U.S. State Department referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security.
“I was going to take them to the Casa del Migrante until it was sure they were going to cross,” Sierra said. The goal, he said, was to avoid new people arriving at the camp and assure that those who were still there would only cross the border when it was clear their cases would be reopened and avoid that they were immediately deported.
“They’re trying to reopen (the cases),” Sierra said. “You’re not going to send a person so that they deport them to their country.” But he said the migrants were so desperate they “wanted to go without guarantees.”
Asked if word of reopened cases could draw more people to the border, Rev. Francisco Gallardo, who is in charge of the shelter, said “the avalanche is already here, a lot of people are arriving.”
When artist Kristina Libby started the Floral Heart Project to give the survivors of COVID-19 victims places to mourn, she was thinking of people like Michelle Pepe.
The last time Pepe saw her father was just before she went into quarantine after contracting the coronavirus — and unwittingly infecting both parents. Her last goodbye to him came by phone.
Family members were unable to visit him at the hospital, nor could they hold a funeral service for him after he died in Delray Beach, Florida. Instead, they held a socially distanced, 15-minute graveside burial in Boston. Pepe watched via video conference call as she continued to care for her mother, who has multiple sclerosis and was recovering from COVID-19.
“We never had any closure . ... He was treated, as they were back then, as diseased,” she said.
Similar stories can be told by countless families, survivors of a pandemic that has now claimed more than 500,000 lives in the United States. Living in New York in the early days of pandemic, Libby was saddened that families had no public memorials, so she decided to act.
Each week she would construct and lay large floral hearts around New York City.
“I would watch people kneel down and pray. I would watch people sort of kiss their fingers and then kiss the heart,” Libby said. “It was allowing them to feel like it was OK to admit our sadness in this moment.”
Libby expanded her efforts outside of New York with the help of volunteers and donations from large floral companies. So, on Monday, floral hearts were laid in 75 locations nationwide in remembrance of the victims of COVID-19.
In the Boston area, three separate floral hearts were placed in different towns throughout the day. Pepe, Jill Federman and Lisa Mazerolle, who lost their fathers within days of each other, visited all three.
The women hugged as they visited the first one, each of them holding a single yellow rose and photographs of their fathers. They knelt silently and placed the flowers inside the heart-shaped wreath.
Federman, whose 83-year-old father died almost a year ago, describes this as the worst year of her life.
“I feel like I’m in a nightmare and I just can’t wake up,” Federman said in a recent video call with Pepe and Lisa Mazerolle.
“It’s really about not just memorializing them but raising awareness,” Mazerolle said.
“There’s no other outlet for our grief. We have nothing,” Pepe said.
The three say they have become like sisters and plan to create another memorial in April around the anniversary of their dads’ deaths. They consider Libby’s efforts both moving and vital.
“It’s just so precious that Kristina thought to do this ... and all of these volunteers, to memorialize our dads,” Pepe said. “They deserve it.”