“In cases like these, you have to have lots of patience, no?”
Migrants who choose to stay at the border, such as Estupiñan García, face an onslaught of challenges.
Sonora, like much of Mexico, is under a strict lockdown. Businesses, schools and many government offices are closed, with officials asking residents to stay home.
As of Sunday night, the state had nearly 600 confirmed cases, including 49 deaths, although officials acknowledge the actual number of cases is likely higher.
In cities such as Nogales, local officials are enforcing quarantine orders tightly. The municipal police have set up checkpoints throughout the city and are fining individuals caught in the street without a valid reason, even confiscating their vehicles in some cases.
For many migrants, the challenge has been to find somewhere to shelter in place safely, and then sustaining themselves for an extended, and still undetermined, amount of time.
The Kino Border Initiative provides to-go meals to deported and northbound migrants in Nogales. Sharar, the group’s communications director, said they’ve gone from serving around 300 meals per day in recent weeks to 180 meals a day.
Since the quarantine began, the prices for some basic necessities have risen.
Estupiñan García works at a grocery store in Nogales. He shares an apartment with two people; they split the roughly $125 in rent each month. Through his job at the grocery store, he has seen the prices go up for certain products, especially dairy, the department where he works.
He’s constantly exposed to shoppers, so he takes every precaution he can to protect himself, including wearing gloves and a face mask and using hand sanitizer.
“The number of cases have accelerated in such a short amount of time,” he said. “With time, you’ll have even more cases, so it is worrying. You have to follow the guidelines officials tell you.”
The Rev. Rodger Babnew runs a shelter in Nogales for Cruzando Fronteras, a Tucson-based ecumenical ministry. He’s also seen costs of meat, eggs, and cereal rise in the past few weeks when he goes shopping to supply the shelter.
Rising food costs are taking a bigger bite out of their already-tight budget.
“We were spending an average of 58 cents per person, per meal, per day,” Babnew said. “But what we’ve realized is that our prices have increased to where it’s costing us about 89 cents per person, per meal, per day.”
The shelter houses 122 people and is under a strict lockdown. They are taking in new arrivals. Babnew said they have the space to isolate them for 14 days to monitor for any symptoms of COVID-19.
The pandemic has left some of the migrants without jobs and the ability to provide for their families, he added. All businesses, including the region’s maquiladoras — the largest source of employment in Nogales — have all shut down.
Babnew said the economic conditions have forced several of the asylum seekers to leave.
He recalled one recent example where a woman with three children from Michoacan had been doing chores for a Nogales family in exchange for shelter. As the pandemic progressed, they stopped working and began charging her for rent, which she couldn’t afford.
The woman would walk about an hour to pick up meals at the Kino Border Initiative for her and her children, Babnew said. But the family they stayed with started keeping that food for themselves.
“It just got kind of ugly for her and she was very uncomfortable,” he said. “She talked to her mother and father and they said come home.”
“From talking to several different families who rented rooms together and stuff like that, they can’t afford the rent. They can’t afford the increasing costs of food,” Babnew said.
Other border cities don’t have Nogales’ problems
Many of the struggles migrants face in Nogales are not found at the other main cities along the Arizona-Mexico border.
That’s because Agua Prieta and San Luis Rio Colorado, across the border from the Yuma area, don’t have the same large numbers of migrants as Nogales.
The way their wait lists are managed has played a role.
Martin Salgado has administered the wait list for asylum seekers at the Casa del Migrante La Divina Providencia in San Luis Rio Colorado since May 2019. There are 1,322 people on the list. The overwhelming majority are Mexicans, with a smaller, sizable number of Cubans.
But most of the people on the list are not waiting in the city, he said.
Months before the pandemic and social distancing guidelines, Salgado began asking Mexican families who would call inquiring about the list to send only one person to sign up, in order to keep entire families from congregating in the city.
“We only asked that the person bring their birth certificates, and then they’d go back so they could wait over there, and avoid making all these expenses,” he said.
Families who were unable to return home would stay with relatives elsewhere in Mexico, Salgado said, or wait in nearby larger cities, such as Mexicali or Tijuana, until they were next in line.
Ramos, who runs the Centro de Atención al Migrante Exodus, the lone migrant shelter in Agua Prieta, took that process a step further.
The wait list he manages is made up almost exclusively of Mexican asylum seekers and numbered 500 people before the start restrictions at the border. He said he learned that nearly all chose to sign up for the list in Agua Prieta based on word of mouth from friends or relatives who had passed through the area.
Rather than make their way to Agua Prieta, which has seen a resurgence in cartel-related violence in the past few months, Ramos allowed migrant families to sign up by phone.
“They would dial and then we would figure out where they’re from, how many people are signing up, and then briefly ask them why they’re seeking asylum in the U.S.,” he said.
Normally, Ramos and Salgado would notify the families next in line several days before their number was called. They would stay at the shelter for a few days until U.S. officials processed them.
With processing shut down, the families are being told to stay put. Migrants routinely call both shelters to get an update on asylum processing, the two men said.
Even though Agua Prieta and San Luis Rio Colorado don’t have the same challenges as Nogales, the pandemic has caused other issues.
In March, U.S. border officials implemented a policy to turn back migrants apprehended at the border. Migrants eligible to be returned to Mexico are immediately sent back across the border through the nearest port of entry, sometimes in a matter of hours.
Salgado said that has emboldened some migrants to make repeated attempts to cross the border illegally.
“It’s created a vicious cycle because, since they know that there’s no crime or punishment right now, they’ll be expelled, then they’ll come have a meal with us, and then they will try one more time,” he said.
In Agua Prieta, migrants expelled through the Douglas port of entry are on their own once on the other side of the border.
Normally, they could turn to Ramos’ shelter, but the shelter closed its doors last month over concerns about COVID-19.
Migrant from Havana, Cuba, seeking asylum
Will US extend border restrictions?
As migrants and border aid groups navigate and weather the pandemic, some U.S. border officials signaled that the restrictions at the border, including the ability to immediately expel migrants, could remain in place even as the fight against COVID-19 eases in the U.S.
The Associated Press reported that Mark Morgan, the acting commissioner for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told reporters on May 7 that the restrictions at the border could extend past May 21.
Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security extended cancellations for its Migrant Protection Protocols from June 1 to June 22.
“Individuals with a hearing date prior to June 22nd should present themselves at the port of entry identified on their tear sheet one month later than the date indicated on their most recently noticed date. For example, if the hearing date is May 10th, individuals should present themselves on June 10th,” the department said in a written statement announcing the change.
Babnew said he expects that migrants will resume traveling to border cities such as Nogales whenever the U.S. government resumes asylum processing at the border.
“My thoughts are once this is lifted within Mexico and within the U.S. that we’re going to see an increase because people still are fleeing,” he said.
Estupiñan García said he plans to continue working in Nogales until his July 13 court hearing in El Paso.
He was able to renew the humanitarian visa that allows him to continue working. He remains hopeful despite the added obstacles the COVID-19 pandemic has brought him.
“I tolerated the dictatorship in Cuba for far too long to, now that I’m so close, get desperate. I have to have lots of patience,” he said.