900 asylum seekers returned for a wait
‘Remain in Mexico’ program expands east along border.
The MATAMOROS, MEXICO — United States government has sent about 900 mostly Central American and Cuban migrants back to this northern Mexico border city since expanding its controversial “remain in Mexico” program to the easternmost point on the shared border two weeks ago, Mexican authorities say.
They are among nearly 3,000 people with pending U.S. immigration proceedings who have been sent back to wait in Mexico’s Tamaulipas state, where the U.S. State Department warns Americans to avoid all travel due to high levels of violence and kidnapping.
Under the program, migrants who turn themselves over to U.S. authorities and, in most cases, request asylum, are returned to Mexico after being given a court date. To pursue their asylum cases they have to wait in Mexico, crossing only for court dates in what is a months-long process.
The program began in January at Tijuana, across from San Diego, and the U.S. government has been expanding it eastward along the border, seeing it as an effective deterrent to the flood of migrants. U.S. authorities began returning migrants at the Tamaulipas city of Nuevo Laredo, on the border with Laredo, Texas, in early July and a few days later added Matamoros, across from Brownsville.
So far more than 20,000 migrants have been returned all along the border to wait in Mexico, Mexican officials say.
On Thursday, some 70 migrants walked sullenly with their heads down across the international bridge into Matamoros. They carried their documents in transparent plastic bags and expressed concerns about how they would wait out the process in a state known for powerful organized crime gangs.
“Donald Trump is just returning everyone,” said Emilio Cáceres, a 25-year-old Honduran farmer who said he planned go home rather than wait. Cáceres said he previously was deported from the U.S. and therefore did not envisage a successful asylum application even though he was given a hearing date.
Over 100 more returned Friday.
Earlier in the week, Luis Raxic of Guatemala was returned to Matamoros with his wife and 1½-yearold daughter. He had similar thoughts of giving up and going home.