Mexico’s new migrant policy adds to U.S. border woes

CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The message popped up on Pastor Juan Fierro’s phone one recent afternoon. U.S. border agents had expelled another group of Central American families to this Mexican city. Could someone take them in?

Fierro, an evangelical minister, was startled by the request. During most of the pandemic, officials in Juarez had sent newly arrived migrants to a quarantine center for 14 days. Suddenly it was full. “There was no place to take care of these people,” Fierro said. So his staff at the Good Samaritan shelter hauled bunk beds into an empty room and penned it in with battered wooden benches. Within days, the rudimentary “quarantine” center held 23 women and children.

President Joe Biden hoped to put the brakes on a surge of U.S.-bound Central American families by relying on a Trumpera policy to return them to Mexico. But increasingly, this country is straining to cope with the influx. Mexico is now limiting the number of families it will allow back. That’s forced the U.S. government to accept most of them as their numbers soar: About 53,000 members of family units were taken into custody in March, compared with 7,300 in January.

Mexico’s pushback has created a new obstacle as the Biden administration struggles to deal with what could be the biggest wave of migrants at the U.S. southern border in 20 years. Pressured by President Donald Trump, Mexico became a crucial buffer zone between Central America and the United States. Its authorities deported tens of thousands of U.S.-bound migrants and took back asylum seekers to await their U.S. court dates. As the coronavirus pandemic descended on both countries last year, the Trump administration adopted one of the most restrictive border policies ever, using a health measure called Title 42 to expel nearly all Central American migrants and asylum seekers to Mexico.

The Biden administration continued to use that rule for families and solo adults, while exempting unaccompanied children. Now U.S. officials fear that Mexico’s refusal to go along with the family expulsions will have a cascade effect. As more Central Americans succeed in entering the U.S. immigration system, their relatives and neighbors back home are deciding to make the journey.

They include Ingrid Posas, 33, who left Honduras in mid-February after seeing Facebook posts of friends who had made it into the United States.

“We heard they were letting families in. That’s why I came,” she said, sitting with her 4-year-old daughter on a bench at the Good Samaritan center’s quarantine site, under a curtain of laundry hanging from clotheslines.

Mexican authorities say their abrupt refusal to accept most families follows a new law that bars children from being detained in adult migration facilities. It sailed through Mexico’s Congress at the end of last year, receiving little press attention.

U.N. agencies and human rights activists had long pressed for such legislation. But the government has few shelters for children in northern Mexico. So just weeks after the law took effect in January, Mexican authorities said they had no more room for Central American families expelled from the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, the busiest crossing point.

“It certainly snuck up on us,” said a senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic issues.

Administration officials then asked whether those families could be flown to other parts of the border and expelled. Mexican authorities “agreed to a limited number,” the senior official said.

In Juárez, that’s been set at 100 family members each day, according to local officials and activists. Even that number is taxing resources in this industrial city across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.