First migrants cross into Texas

MEXICO CITY: The first asylum seekers from a Mexican border camp that had become a symbol of Trump era immigration restrictions entered the United States yesterday, under a new policy meant to end the hardships endured by migrants in dangerous border towns.

The UN’s International Organisation for Migration said the initial group comprised 27 people who had been living in the makeshift camp in Matamoros, opposite Brownsville, Texas.

Some residents have lived there for more than a year under former president Donald Trump’s controversial Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) programme requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for US court hearings.

A new process under President Joe Biden will gradually allow thousands of MPP asylum seekers to await courts’ decisions within the US.

Some migrants last week were permitted to cross into San Ysidro, California.

Freezing temperatures at the USMexico border had made the Matamoros camp a priority, the Department of Homeland Security said.

Migrants at the camp have struggled to ensure proper hygiene and to protect themselves from organised crime. — Reuters

PHOTO: REUTERS Weary . . . A migrant who crossed Gateway International Bridge from the Mexico side to be processed to seek asylum in the US waits with a child at a bus terminal in Brownsville, Texas.