San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
A surge farther north
Huge rise in migrant crossings from Del Rio to Eagle Pass
DEL RIO — Struggling to escape the Rio Grande’s grasping current, Ernesto Parra collapsed onto the refuse-choked Texas shore.
“I was very afraid, especially for the little ones,” Parra, 55, said moments after he waded across the river from Mexico with his wife, Mariana, their 11-year-old son and two dozen other migrants.
Parra owned a small business in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo. He and his family are part of a wave of Venezuelans fleeing their shattered country.
“There are things that have terrified us on this journey,” he said as his wife cried inconsolably. “But we couldn’t remain at home any longer.”
Across the entire border with Mexico, the U.S. has seen an upwelling of migrants this year. But in few places has the traffic increased as sharply as it has along the 60-mile stretch from Del Rio to Eagle Pass.
From October through March, agents in the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector had 68,570 “encounters” with migrants — more than four times as many as in the same period a year earlier.
The Rio Grande Valley in far South Texas has long been the favorite corridor for undocumented border crossers. But smugglers and word of mouth are drawing many farther north, putting great stress on rural areas of Southwest Texas unaccustomed to the crush.
“This is the worst we’ve seen it as far as the migrants. It’s been terrible,” said Joe Frank Martinez, 64, the Democratic sheriff of Val Verde County, whose seat is Del Rio. “The policymakers came in and changed the policy, but they didn’t have a plan to put the policy in place.”
Echoing officials in neighboring Kinney County, who last month declared
an emergency, Martinez called the influx a “crisis” that has overwhelmed local, state and federal efforts to contain it.
“It’s causing a lot of hardship to our community, to local resources, to our federal partners,” Martinez said. “This is going to continue until some policy is put in place that prohibits this activity and allows these immigrants a path for citizenship.”
A world on the move
Nearly destitute Mexicans and Central Americans used to dominate the cross-border traffic along this stretch. But in recent weeks, some 60 percent of the people passing through a migrant assistance center in Del Rio have been Venezuelans. The rest were from Haiti, West Africa and Uzbekistan.
A whole world seemingly on the move, squeezing through tiny, isolated Del Rio.
The influx of Venezuelans — about 100 every day — underscores the ubiquity of mobile communications as well as inconsistent border enforcement and confusion about the Biden administration’s immigration policies, Martinez and others say.
Across the entire border, the Border Patrol had more than 550,000 encounters with migrants from October through March, nearly three times as many as a year earlier, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The number of single adults entering the country — most of them men looking for work in an expanding U.S. economy — has spiked. Migrant families and unaccompanied children also continue to pour in, encouraged by word that some who preceded them were granted at least temporary permission to enter.
“The border is going to stay open to those who really want to cross,” said Alexis Araujo, 51, a Honduran construction worker who was preparing to make a second attempt to cross the Rio Grande from the Mexican border city of Piedras Negras, which sits opposite Eagle Pass.
“I am here by the grace of God, and he is not going to fail me now.”
Treacherous crossing
Central Americans’ journey to the border can take weeks or even months of walking, hopping trains and riding buses. Haitians and Africans have traveled in the same fashion from South America.
Many of the better-financed Venezuelans arriving in Del Rio fly into Mexico City or Cancún with visas, catch flights to the northern city of Monterrey and take buses to the border.
Then they’re led to the barren Mexican riverbank by smugglers in the pre-dawn darkness. The water is knee-deep near an island in the middle of the river. But it deepens and the current accelerates near the Texas side, an area of pastures and quarries a few miles west of the center of Del Rio.
A San Antonio Express-News reporter and photographer watched as the Parra family and other migrants made the crossing at this spot on the last day in April.
Younger children suddenly found themselves chest deep in dark water. Adults struggled to hold infants and packs of dry clothes aloft, above the reach of the water. Grunts of exertion turned to panicked cries.
Once ashore, adults soothed upset children and one another. Some wept from jangled nerves, others from pure relief. Many changed into dry clothing. Discarded items choked an empty lot and the patio of a neighboring home.
Rather than try to evade detention, the Venezuelans turn themselves in. The U.S. agents keep busy processing rather than pursuing them. Politeness prevails, even kindness. Agents offer a hand to those struggling to climb out of the river — and coats
“There are things that have terrified us on this journey.”
Ernesto Parra, immigrant from Venezuela
to those shivering from the cold.
The Biden administration in March granted temporary protected status to Venezuelans already in the U.S. Those who apply for the status and are approved are protected from deportation for 18 months. They can apply for work permits and authorization to travel.
In addition, there has been a noticeable tendency since early April to allow Venezuelan migrant families and even individuals to apply for political asylum and to be released to await hearings, said John de la Vega, a South Florida immigration lawyer with Venezuelan clients.
“These past three weeks, we’ve seen them be more reasonable at the border,” De la Vega said. “The policy is inconsistent … but more lenient.”
Many, if not most, of the Venezuelans intend to apply for asylum, said De La Vega and migrants’ relatives. The vast majority of such petitions are rejected.
Many of the families who crossed with Parra’s appear to have been released from custody within days. Adults traveling without children were still being detained, according to their relatives.
In a statement, Customs and Border Protection officials said migrants are released pending court appearances because of crowding in detention facilities and the need to guard against the spread of the coronavirus.
“As the administration reviews the current immigration process, balancing it against the ongoing pandemic, we will continue to use all current authorities to avoid keeping individuals in a congregate setting for any length of time,” the statement said.
‘Something has to be done’
Twenty-four hours before Parra and his group of Venezuelans scrambled into Texas, Sheriff Martinez stood at the same spot along the river and considered the impact of the immigration surge on his isolated county of 40,000 people.
Val Verde was one of a handful of majority Hispanic counties on the Texas border that voted for Donald Trump in November, in part because of concerns over immigration.
With graying hair, a burly build and a starched white shirt, Martinez fits the classic profile of a Texas sheriff. Raised in Del Rio, he’s been a lawman for most of his life, serving as elected sheriff here for 13 years after finishing a 25-year career as a Texas state trooper.
A day earlier, Martinez had attended a meeting in Uvalde where ranchers and others demanded that the government do more to stop the migrants. He said he understands the frustration.
“In the last administration, the rhetoric was negative,” the sheriff said. “A lot of people are still tied to that.”
In mid-March, Martinez’s deputies responded to a gruesome crash that occurred when a smuggler’s pickup, fleeing state troopers, rammed another vehicle head-on. Eight migrants were killed. A local man and his young daughter traveling in the other vehicle were badly injured.
Sharply critical of Biden’s immigration moves, Martinez is no easier on Trump and his predecessors.
“Every administration over the past several decades has talked about it and given it lip service and not done anything about it,” Martinez said as he scanned the river and the far shore with binoculars. “Something has to be done rather than just talking.”
“Our goal — my goal — is to not have them wandering through our streets,” the sheriff said.
Healing ‘broken-hearted’
In two small municipal buildings in Del Rio, volunteers offer assistance to migrant families who have been released to await asylum hearings.
In one room, women seated at computers help arrange plane and bus tickets, paid for by the migrants or their sponsors. In an adjoining room, volunteers pass out water, answer questions and keep an eye on toddlers and preschool children playing with donated toys.
The recent arrivals from Venezuela and elsewhere are better off than previous waves of Central American migrants. Most have the money — their own or provided by relatives and friends — to move on from here, said Tiffany Burrow, director of operations at the Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition.
“We are like a travel hub for these people,” Burrow said. “They have to figure out how they are going to survive long term in this country.”
Many of the Venezuelans, Haitians and Cubans make a beeline to Miami. But others head for Utah, Nevada, Georgia or Oklahoma — anywhere friends or family await.
“This is not just about South Texas. This is much bigger than that,” Burrow said of the migrant crush. “It really needs to be looked at. Because it’s not sustainable the way it is. I don’t know what the answer is.”
The volunteers’ ethos could be summed up by the psalm someone tacked to a wall in the chaotic receiving hall.
“He heals the broken-hearted,” it says, “and binds up their wounds.”