USA TODAY International Edition
Crisis at border fueled by confusion
USA is ‘ not open,’ but some get in, some don’t
JUÁREZ, Mexico – Maribel E. reached the top of the Paso del Norte bridge, where the USA ends and Mexico begins, clutching her 5- month- old baby in a black and white Mickey Mouse blanket.
The 36- year- old Honduran mother stopped at the top, just after 5 a. m., unsure of what to do next. The past hours had been harrowing. She had crossed the border illegally, in the desert dark and cold. The Border Patrol had taken her fingerprints and left her on the bridge back to a city that can be dangerous to those who don’t know it.
“I couldn’t have imagined everything that happened,” she said. “I came to give my son a better future. I thought they were accepting women with children.”
Officials insist the border is closed, but that message is ignored by smugglers called “coyotes” and thousands
of people attempting unauthorized border crossings, and the Biden administration isn’t applying its “closed border” policies evenly in Texas.
“The border is not open,” said Troy Miller, the senior administration official performing the duties of the U. S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner.
At the El Paso- Juárez border, the Border Patrol expels migrants to Mexico – including people from Honduras, Guatemala, Ecuador, Brazil and other nations – under the Title 42 public health law invoked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a year ago to prevent the spread of COVID- 19 in border holding facilities.
The Title 42 mandate prohibits the Border Patrol from holding people in “congregant settings.”
The same week that border agents ejected Maribel E., who asked that her full name not be used because of her uncertain immigration status, dozens of migrant families who crossed with children in South Texas were flown up to El Paso – where some were processed for release into the USA.
Border Patrol Sector Chief Gloria Chavez told the El Paso Times that since March 8, “the El Paso Sector has been receiving a varying number of family units daily from the South Texas region” and that the agency’s “priority is to process them and expel them into Mexico under Title 42.”
“We work very closely with the government of Mexico and they also have capacity issues that we have to consider; therefore, only a limited amount of families from the region and from South Texas can be expelled into Ciudad Juárez daily in coordination with Mexico immigration officials,” Chavez said in an emailed statement.
“This has prompted us to coordinate with local El Paso city and county officials and non- governmental organizations to coordinate the release of families from the South Texas region to our local NGO shelter network,” she said.
El Paso’s Annunciation House shelter receives families that are released, director Ruben Garcia said.
The Border Patrol reported 18,945 apprehensions or “encounters” of family units – children traveling with a parent or legal guardian – in February, up from 7,064 in January.
The numbers are well above levels from a year ago, when the Border Patrol reported roughly 4,600 apprehensions of people traveling with a family member in February 2020 and about 5,100 in January 2020.
At 5 a. m. Thursday, there were no representatives of the government of Mexico to receive Maribel E., her baby and two Guatemalan mothers with four girls between them in Juárez. The women found themselves at the Paso del Norte bridge, where cross- border commuters idled their engines and blared their horns as the line of passenger vehicles inched north.
Migrants are especially vulnerable in the minutes and hours after they are left at border crossings to return to Mexico, advocates said.
Two nonprofit organizations, Human Rights Watch and Human Rights First, documented hundreds of abuses against migrants returned to Juárez and other Mexican border cities, including sexual assault, theft and kidnapping.
Maribel E. called her mother in the USA on a cellphone: “They kicked me out of the country, Mami. They kicked me out of Texas. I’m here where it says, ‘ Puente Internacional Paso del Norte.’ And my son without clothes for the cold.”
Every day around 9 a. m., a Chihuahua state- run migrant aid center opens around the corner from the base of the Paso del Norte bridge in Juárez. The agency, known as the CAIM, coordinates with U. S. Customs and Border Protection to receive expelled migrant families, said Enrique Valenzuela, who runs the center. The CAIM received about 100 migrants expelled in family units Monday, Valenzuela said, and took in dozens each of the previous three days. The windows of the CAIM building look upon the bridge, and agency workers watch for when people are heading south on the northbound side, he said.
“It’s been decided that we’re going to receive them at the Paso del Norte bridge,” Valenzuela said. “They send everyone around midday.”
The CAIM directs those who need a safe place to “filter shelters” in the city’s network of religious and nonprofit refuges, where they must quarantine for two weeks.
“In reality, we can say that we’re full,” Valenzuela said. “At this point, they have very, very limited capacity.”
Garcia said the Annunciation House receives migrant families flown up from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and released by the Border Patrol in El Paso.
Monday, the Annunciation House received several dozen migrants who waited for years for their chance to cross into the USA legally under the Migrant Protection Protocols.
Linda Rivas, executive director of El Paso’s Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said the nonprofit network’s attorneys have done “bridge observations,” watching for patterns in the expulsion of migrants under Title 42.
Citing inconsistencies in the Border Patrol’s application of Title 42, she said, “Some Title 42 people are accompanied by the Mexican government, and sometimes they’re completely by themselves.
“This inconsistent treatment of Title 42 – depending on what sector a person crosses in – is leading people like these mothers to take these very, very dangerous risks of potentially making it across, and some people are not,” Rivas said.
Maribel E., in a government- issued blue surgical face mask, nuzzled her baby close. On the phone, the woman she called begged: “Don’t you dare go anywhere but with someone who is going to a shelter. To a shelter, you hear me!
“Sí, Mami, OK.”
The voice on the line insisted: “Don’t stay on the street!”
The metal doors were drawn down tight on the dental offices, pharmacies and currency exchanges that line Avenida Juárez at the base of the bridge. Taxi drivers hawked their services, but Maribel didn’t have the pesos to pay, nor anywhere to go.