Mexicans join the asylum line at the US border
More seek refuge amid surge from Central America
MATAMOROS, Mexico — Emma Sánchez waited patiently in line at the foot of a bridge leading across the Rio Grande and into Texas, one of tens of thousands of people stuck on Mexico’s northern border seeking political asylum in the United States.
“They cut my husband to pieces and dumped his body by the road,” Sánchez said matter-of-factly as she showed a visitor a link to a news article about the grisly demise of her spouse, a former taxi driver who, his widow said, refused to pay protection money to the local mob.
“Now I’m afraid they are coming after me and my kids,” she added, explaining why she had fled to Matamoros with her four daughters.
It is the kind of haunting account heard frequently in this Mexican border town, where hundreds of Central American asylum-seekers who say they are fleeing gang violence await court dates in the United States. They mostly spend their days in a rough tent city along the Rio Grande, relying largely on charity from donors from the United States and Mexico for food, medical care and other essentials.
But Sánchez is not from Central America. She is a native of Acapulco — once a beach destination for Hollywood movie stars and other high-rolling vacationers, now a sun-splashed Pacific Coast battleground where rival Mexican factions battle for control of drug trafficking and other illicit enterprises.
She is also illustrative of a relatively new — and, from the Trump administration perspective, troubling — trend: The convergence along the border of escalating numbers of Mexican nationals seeking asylum in the United States.
Word about Central Americans and others gaining U.S. footholds via the asylum process has spread to violence-racked areas of Mexico, prompting many to head north to border towns, from Matamoros on the Gulf of Mexico to Tijuana on the Pacific.
“First we heard about the caravans, then we heard that the Central Americans were getting asylum in the United States,” said José Antonio Mendoza, 28, another asylum hopeful here from Guerrero, the western Mexican state where Acapulco is also situated. “And then we heard that asylum was also a possibility for Mexicans.”
Mendoza has been waiting here for two months with his wife and two children, ages 3 and 7.
The number of Mexican asylum-seekers arriving at the southwestern border has been steadily rising in recent months — even as the ranks of Central Americans and others seeking U.S. refuge have slowed in the face of crackdowns and policy shifts in both Mexico and the United States.
Mexican nationals now account for slightly more than half the 21,000 or so people on various asylum waiting lists in Mexican border towns, according to a study last month by researchers at the University of Texas and UC San Diego. A year ago, relatively few Mexican nationals were in the bulging border asylum queues.
“People hear through friends, through social media, through the news that
Mexicans can come to the border and get asylum in the United States,” noted Gladys Cañas, who heads a nonprofit group aiding migrants here. “Some sell their homes or land to finance the trip, but they end up getting stuck here. So far, asylum is more of an illusion than a reality for many Mexicans.”
Here, as at other crossings along the Rio Grande, blueuniformed officers from U.S. Customs and Border Protection are stationed midbridge and stop many asylum-seekers from proceeding into U.S. territory. U.S. officials defend the process as necessary because of staff shortages. But immigrant advocates call the practice illegal, possibly sending Mexicans back to their deaths, and have sued to stop it.
For U.S. officials, the Mexican influx poses a special challenge: Unlike Central Americans and other Spanish-speaking asylum aspirants, Mexicans cannot be dispatched back to Mexico to await future court hearings, the fate of more than 50,000 asylum applicants under the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. International law has long banned sending people back to countries where they may face persecution.
Instead, according to Mexican asylum-seekers and advocates, U.S. authorities have adopted a policy of allowing only a trickle of Mexican asylum-seekers to enter the United States, a process called “metering.”
And that policy could soon become more restrictive: Recently, Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said Mexican nationals seeking asylum in the United States might be shipped to Guatemala rather than being allowed to wait in the United States for the conclusion of asylum cases, which can drag on for months or years.