Coronavirus is shrinking migrants’ camp on border
SAN ANTONIO — An encampment of U.S. asylumseekers in Matamoros, Mexico, has dwindled to less than half its size as the coronavirus pulses across the Americas.
Migrants are leaving the camp, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville, out of fear and futility as immigration courts close indefinitely and cases of COVID-19 began to appear in their community.
Some are going to other parts of Mexico to start a life there. Others are returning to the violence and persecution from which they fled in their home countries.
“There’s people who are scared and want to go home. And people who are fatigued from being here. They can’t endure it all,” said Perla, 45, a Nicaraguan asylum-seeker who asked that her last name not be used for fear of retribution. “Hope is ending.”
As recently as last month, the camp of tents and tarps was home to 2,500 asylumseekers, stuck in the nearly defunct U.S. “Remain in Mexico” program. But only about 1,000 migrants are left there. A census by the nonprofit Angry Tias and Abuelas counted 960 migrants at the camp, including at least 300 under age 17.
Perla has been living at the camp since last August, awaiting U.S. asylum proceedings. She was selected to be leader of the Nicaraguans in the camp and gets paid to help in the Global Response Management’s pharmacy trailer. She said she’s holding out until Sep
tember, the month of her next hearing. But if it gets postponed?
“I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t want to think about it,” she said.
She’s at the camp after fleeing violence and persecution with her 7- and 8-year-old granddaughters.
An increasing number of migrants are quarantined in the camp. After the first positive coronavirus case three weeks ago, at least four more migrants have tested positive, with many more awaiting test results. Nearly two dozen are in isolation.
Some volunteers think that they may have to start “reverse quarantine” procedures — where those who are healthy are isolated from the majority-sick population.
“Definitely COVID has been a tipping point for some people,” said Elizabeth Cavazos, a volunteer at Angry Tias and Abuelas, a group that has been providing resources to the camp residents for months. “Remember, these are people who are already stress-saturated.”
On Friday, the Justice Department announced that all courts for Migrant Protection Protocols — the government’s term for the Remain in Mexico policy — will be closed indefinitely, citing coronavirus risks.
The courts are on the edge of the U.S.-Mexico border — some of them pop-up tents that cost millions of taxpayer dollars to build to adjudicate MPP migrant cases. The migrants crossed the international bridge at their appointed court date, were escorted into the white tent, and then videoconferenced before a judge in San Antonio.
Since March, the Justice Department has been pushing back migrants’ court dates to a month or two in advance, requiring migrants to come to the bridge at their appointed time and then receive a new notice with a date a few months ahead.
But now, as Texas and other states grapple with a coronavirus surge, the courts are shutting down until three criteria are met: when Texas, Arizona and California all are in phase 3 of reopening (only Texas has reached that phase); when the federal government’s global health advisory lowers to Level 2 (it’s currently at Level 4 — “Do Not Travel); and when all of Mexico’s northern border states are “yellow” in the country’s stoplight system (Tamaulipas, where Matamoros is located, is red).
Once all three criteria are met, there will be social distancing protocols, mask requirements, temperature screenings and capacity considerations as the courts reopen, the Justice Department said.
Mexican state authorities reported more than 13,500 cases of the coronavirus in Tamaulipas.
Because of the continued court postponements, many of the migrants at the camp have been waiting for more than a year, relying on outside donations to survive. Some got jobs in Matamoros, but many of those establishments have been shut down because of the pandemic.
Informal classes taught by educated asylum-seekers for the young children also have ended, Perla said.
Cavazos, the volunteer, said the courts closing “has definitely sparked conversation about ‘Well, what can we do?’ And that’s why we are trying to find resources for them to pursue other avenues of asylum in Mexico or relocating.”
She said Angry Tias and Abuelas is looking into reintegration programs for the migrants who decide to attempt to take root in Mexico. The decision is a gamble: There have been dozens of reports of kidnappings and extortion of U.S. asylum-seekers who were caught in Remain in Mexico.
“That light at the end of the tunnel, it keeps getting pulled further and further away,” Cavazos said.
Perla said she doesn’t think the camp will close. Too many people put too much on the line to bear the thought that it was all for nothing and to give up.
“I really can’t go back to my country. Just the other day, they burned the house of a family member,” she said. “And I can’t turn back after coming here with all those dreams, after all those sacrifices and all that I’ve paid. We have to endure. We will.”