IN-‘TENT’ ON RETURN TO U.S.
Migrants wait in Mex. camp for next shot to cross over
Migrants kicked out of the US are amassing on the Mexican side of the border, erecting a tent city while waiting for another chance to try and enter the US.
On Oct. 13 the Biden administration announced it had reinstated Title 42 — a Trump-era health policy it had originally canceled in April — to allow the rapid expulsion of illegal immigrants and stem the tide of people flooding across the border.
The order applied to Venezuelans, of which 189,000 were encountered on the border in the 2022 fiscal year according to official statistics, as people flee its failing regime and economic uncertainty.
Since that time the border city of El Paso, Texas, has rejected about 1,800 Venezuelan nationals to Juárez, its Mexican sister city, according to the El Paso Times. However, few of them are heading back.
“We’re all waiting for an opportunity to cross,” Gilfred Jimenez, a Venezuelan who has not yet attempted to enter the US but intends to, told the El Paso paper.
Confusion
Jimenez is part of a tent city which has sprung up in Juárez, made up of both Venezuelans rejected at the border and new arrivals, who have often sold their homes and possessions to make the journey north for a shot at entering the US.
The immigrants huddle together on broken furniture and have spelled out SOS on the ground next to their makeshift tents, which are made of blankets and weighted down with rocks.
It’s unclear how many Venezuelans who cross the border are being expelled and under what criteria.
The city of El Paso reported that 1,282 people attempted to cross its border on Wednesday and that it had 2,333 in custody.
Shortly after Title 42 was resumed, Venezuelans were frustrated because some of them were being sent back to Mexico while others were allowed to stay in the US and continue the asylum-seeking process — which can take decades.
“They never told us why we were being sent back but some Venezuelan men who crossed behind us got to stay,” Angie Pina told The Post earlier this month.
Pina was expelled from the US, but The Post witnessed as she illegally crossed back into the US for another attempt at gaining asylum.
As part of the Oct. 13 policy change, Mexico agreed to take Venezuelans rejected from the US, which it had previously refused to do.
Those waiting on the Mexican side of the border are issued 180-day visas by the government. It is unclear what will happen to them after that.
In hopes of discouraging illegal crossings at the border, the Biden administration announced it will grant 24,000 Venezuelans humanitarian entry if they apply online and arrive via air — rather by crossing the land border as hundreds of thousands have been doing, with El Paso alone recording up to 2,100 migrants in a single day.
That entry doesn’t apply to the thousands of people who are arriving at land borders, destitute and impoverished. Officials said a large proportion of those migrants had come from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, described by Customs and Border Protection as “failing communist regimes.”
Most people who arrive come in pockets, groups who have sold their valuables and borrowed money, and then pooled it to get to the US.
Having made the journey with no passports and having no money for transport home, they are less likely to turn back — and more likely to turn to ruthless cartels to be smuggled over.
“If they don’t allows us back in, we will go back in — legally or illegally,” another Venezuelan, who did not want to give his identity, previously told The Post.
In the 2022 fiscal year, Border Patrol set a record of 2.38 million people stopped at the southern land border — a huge increase from other recent years, with far less than 1 million encounters recorded in both 2019 and 2020.
Although it is difficult to estimate the number of illegal border crossers, estimates have run as high as 600,000 in the past year.