Migrants already at border fret over impact of caravans
Waiting on the southern end of a bridge that leads to the United States, Humberto Alvarez Gonzalez warily follows the progress of the caravans winding through Mexico with the goal of reaching the border.
Alvarez and about two dozen other people are waiting in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, Texas, because U.S. customs officers say there’s no space to process them. They sleep on cots near the bridge. Some have waited for two weeks.
Now, Alvarez, a 32-year-old from Cuba, is worried that large waves of migrants in caravans still hundreds of miles away from the border might provoke the U.S. government to reject them altogether.
“Our idea is to enter before the caravan,” he said. “We are afraid that the group of migrants will reach us and that they will judge us together with them.”
Asylum seekers already camping at border crossings worry that how the Trump administration responds to the main caravan of some 4,000 Central American migrants and several smaller ones behind it could leave them shut out. President Trump last week threatened to detain asylum seekers in large tents and send as many as 15,000 active-duty soldiers to the border. He’s also spoken of closing the border.
U.S. government officials say the bridges remain open to asylum seekers. But in South Texas, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers stand at the center of bridges to check documents and stop most asylum seekers.
And in San Diego, people at the San Ysidro crossing wait more than a month, and volunteers operate an informal takea-number system to spare migrants from having to wait in line or sleep out in the open. Inspectors there typically process about 100 claims a day.
“It’s not turning people away, it’s asking them to wait,” said CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan. “We are taking people in as we have capacity to do so.”
At the bridge where Alvarez and dozens of others wait, security guards on the Mexican side hold back asylum seekers until U.S. border inspectors tell them how many people they will accept. Some days, five or 10 people are allowed. On other days, the asylum seekers said, no one is.
At another bridge separating Brownsville and Matamoros, four women and their children slept under a blue tarp on the bridge. The tarp had been left behind by previous asylum seekers. One of the women said she had waited there for two days.
Seeking asylum at a port of entry is legal under U.S. law, as government officials have reaffirmed this year. Trump has proposed banning people crossing illegally between ports of entry from claiming asylum — something many immigration experts say he can’t do under the law.