Mexico final hurdle for migrants
Venezuelans trying to reach US border face being sent home in crackdown
Venezuelan migrants often have a quick answer when asked to name the most difficult stretch of their eight-country journey to the US border, and it’s not the days long jungle trek through Colombia and Panama with its venomous vipers, giant spiders and scorpions. It’s Mexico.
“In the jungle, you have to prepare for animals. In Mexico, you have to prepare for humans,” Daniel Ventura, 37, said after three days walking through the Darien Gap and four months waiting in Mexico to enter the US legally using the government’s online appointment system, called CBP One. He and his family of six were headed to Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, where he has a relative.
Mexico’s crackdown on immigration in recent months — at the urging of the Biden administration — has hit Venezuelans especially hard. The development highlights how much the US depends on Mexico to control migration, which has reached unprecedented levels and is a top issue for voters as US President Joe Biden seeks re-election.
Arrests of migrants for illegally crossing the Us-mexico border have dropped so far this year after a record high in December. The biggest decline was among Venezuelans, whose arrests plummeted to 3184 in February and 4422 in January from 49,717 in December.
While two months do not make a trend and illegal crossings remain high by historical standards, Mexico’s strategy to keep migrants closer to its border with Guatemala than the US is at least temporary relief for the Biden administration.
Large numbers of Venezuelans began reaching the US in 2021, first by flying to Mexico and then on foot and by bus after Mexico imposed visa restrictions. In September, Venezuelans briefly replaced Mexicans as the largest nationality crossing the border.
Mexico’s efforts have included forcing migrants from trains, flying and busing them to the southern part of the country, and flying some home.
Last week, Mexico said it would give about US$110 ($184) a month for six months to each Venezuelan it deports, hoping they won’t come back. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador extended the offer last week to Ecuadorians and Colombians.
“If you support people in their places of origin, the migratory flow reduces considerably, but that requires resources and that is what the United States government has not wanted to do,” said Obrador.
Migrants say they must pay corrupt officials at Mexico’s government checkpoints to avoid being sent back to southern cities. Each setback is costly and frustrating.
“In the end, it is a business because they want to take the last of what you have,” said Yessica Gutierrez, 30, who left Venezuela in January in a group of 15. They avoided some checkpoints by hiking through brush.
The group is now waiting in Mexico City to get an appointment so they can legally cross the Us-mexico border.
To use the CBP One app, applicants must be in central or northern Mexico. So Gutierrez’s group sleeps in two donated tents across the street from a migrant shelter and check the app daily.
More than 500,000 migrants have used the app to enter the US at land crossings with Mexico since its introduction in January 2023. They can stay in the US for two years under a presidential authority called parole, which entitles them to work.
“I would rather cross the jungle 10 times than pass through Mexico once,” said Jose Alberto Uzcategui, who left a construction job in the
Venezuelan city of Trujillo with his wife and sons in a family group. They are waiting in Mexico City until they have enough money for a phone so they can use CBP One.
A young Venezuelan plays on a railroad track in Mexico City.
Venezuelans account for the vast majority of 73,166 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap in January and February, which is on pace to pass last year’s record of more than 500,000, according to the Panamanian
government, suggesting Venezuelans are still fleeing a country that has lost more than 7 million people amid political turmoil and economic decline. Mexican authorities stopped Venezuelan migrants more than 56,000 times in February, about twice as much as the previous two months, according to government figures.
“The underlying question is: Where are the Venezuelans? They’re in Mexico, but where are they?” said Stephanie Brewer, who covers Mexico for the Washington Office on Latin America, a group that monitors human rights abuses.
Mexico deported only about 429 Venezuelans during the first two months of 2024, meaning nearly all are waiting in Mexico.
Many fear that venturing north of Mexico City will get them fleeced or returned to southern Mexico. The US admits 1450 people a day through CBP One with appointments that are granted two weeks out.
Even if they evade Mexican authorities, migrants feel threatened by gangs who kidnap, extort and commit other violent crimes.
“You have to go town by town because the cartels need to put food on their plates,” said Maria Victoria
Colmenares, 27, who waited seven months in Mexico City for a CBP One appointment, supporting her family by working as a waitress while her husband worked at a car wash.
“It’s worth the wait because it brings a reward,” said Colmenares, who took a taxi from the Tijuana airport to the border crossing with San Diego, hours before her appointment.
Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott has touted his own efforts to explain the recent reduction in illegal crossings in his state, where at least 95 per cent of Border Patrol arrests of Venezuelans occur. Those have included installing razor wire, putting a floating barrier in the Rio Grande and making plans to build a new base for members of the National Guard.
Some Venezuelans still come north despite the perils.
Marbelis Torrealba, 35, arrived in Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, with her sister and niece, carrying ashes of her daughter who drowned in a boat that capsized in Nicaragua. A shelter arranged for them to enter the US legally on emergency humanitarian grounds, but she was prepared to cross illegally. “I already experienced the worst: Seeing your child die in front of you and not being able to do anything.” —AP