Fernando Llano / AP
A Haitian immigrant wades across the Rio Grande to reach Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.
The 35-year-old father weighed his options: return to the US, where he could be sent back to Haiti, or stay in Mexico as authorities shut down around him and other immigrants. .
Wood, who declined to give his full name for fear of retaliation by the United States or Mexico for voicing objections, said he has no plan but needs to do so if he is to take care of his wife and two daughters.
“I want to stay in Mexico here, but I’m scared because I’m not allowed here,” Wood told BuzzFeed News. “But America can expel us. I don’t know what to do.”
Like the hundreds of immigrants who left the camp in Del Rio, Texas, this week in an effort to avoid being flown to Haiti, the walls are closing in on them, this time from the Mexican side of the border. Immigration officers, made up of armed soldiers and police, have been conducting day and night raids on the streets of Ciudad Acuña, where they are holding and sending immigrants to the states. southern Mexico. For days, immigrants have crossed the precarious Rio Grande, moving to whichever side of the border seems friendliest.
On Thursday before dawn, Mexican immigration agents drove into the camp surrounded by local police and the National Guard. Immigrants, mostly Haitian, who were living in a park in Ciudad Acuña, were startled awake. The Mexican government’s presence is enough to frighten some of them back into the US border, which they previously abandoned after the Biden administration began bringing back hundreds of immigrants. Haiti. No one was detained at the park, but the threat was still present.
The Biden administration has moved thousands of immigrants from the Del Rio area to other areas of the border, either to be processed into the country or removed. In large part, it relies on the Title 42 policy, which sees the pandemic as a reason to allow border agents to quickly return asylum seekers, to clear the camp in Del Rio of thousands of Haitians. . In just a few days, the United States brought nearly 2,000 immigrants back to Haiti. On Friday, more flights are expected to arrive in the country, which is struggling after the earthquake and the assassination of the president.
Rodrigo Abd / AP
Students gather before the start of class at the Sante Bernadette School inside Fort Dimanche, a former prison, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on September 23, 2021. Sparse conditions indicate soil water must go as far as it rebuilds after an earthquake in mid-August.
On Friday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the camp below the Del Rio International Bridge had been cleared and that no migrants were staying there. Since September 9, nearly 30,000 immigrants have been encountered in Del Rio, Mayorkas said. Another 8,000 people have voluntarily returned to Mexico, and another 5,000 are pending, meaning they will be deported or allowed to stay in the country.
Mayorkas added that more than 12,000 immigrants who have entered the US will have their cases heard.
He asserted that the use of Title 42 was necessary due to the pandemic and that it was not an immigration policy. He also noted that the policy allows for exceptions.
On Thursday, a Mexican immigration officer, who gave BuzzFeed News only his last name, Rodriguez, said they, along with the National Guard and local police, showed up at the park in Ciudad. Acuña before dawn and woke the terrified immigrants up because America was launching an attack. operating in Del Rio, and they were worried people would drown trying to get back to Mexico.
But their early morning presence had the opposite effect on some of the immigrants who waded across the Rio Grande back to Del Rio, Texas. Mexican authorities soon blocked their approach, cutting a yellow rope that the immigrants had used to cross the river.
Although many Haitians initially left their homes for Brazil or Chile after 7.2 magnitude earthquake, immigration policies in those countries have become more restrictive over the past five years, according to a 2021 report on the migration of Haitian women. The report, published by the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California, Hastings College of Law, says tighter restrictions have driven more Haitians to Mexico.
Jose Torres / Reuters
Immigrants from Central America, Haiti and Cuba line up outside the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission to apply for asylum and refugee status in Mexico.
One of them was Wood, her 12-year-old daughter who fainted from dehydration last week at the camp in Del Rio.
“If you go out into the streets in Haiti, you have to pray to come back,” he said.
Wood immigrated with his family to Chile, where he tried to make a living – but without legal status there, finding a well-paying job was difficult.
He considered returning to Chile, but that meant passing through the Darién Gap, a forest that UNICEF description It is one of the most dangerous roads in the world. This is the hardest part of the journey up to the US-Mexico border, Wood said, adding that criminals robbed immigrants and brutally raped women in the area.
“It’s something you have to go through once in your life, not twice,” he said.
Standing in the camp Wood had slept with his family, Rodriguez, an immigration officer, said authorities had set up a shelter in Ciudad Acuña for people who wanted to leave the park where they had camped. He also said immigrants can continue the asylum application process with the Mexican Refugee Assistance Commission, but they need to do so in the city of Tapachula in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas.
But Tapachula is a prison city for undocumented immigrants to leave the state or work permits. If they tried to leave without paying the smugglers thousands of dollars, they would have to confront National Guard troops. There have also been violent confrontations for years between immigrants trying to leave and Mexican authorities, under pressure from American officials, who are trying to stop them from moving north. Last month, Mexican officials condemn the “inappropriate” actions of their agents after they clashed violently with immigrants in Tapachula.
Jose Torres / Reuters
Mexican agents apprehend a member of a caravan of immigrants and asylum seekers who were hoping to get to Mexico City and obtain paperwork that would allow them to travel the country. The immigrants had grown weary of waiting for documents in Tapachula.
When Rodriguez told a group of immigrants that they would have to return to Tapachula if they hoped to complete asylum, they wailed and protested together, knowing what awaited them there.
Diana, 30, of Colombia, said she sells water in Tapachula in an effort to cover the $200 rent, but it’s very difficult. Waiting to complete the asylum process takes months, she said, and they have to find a way to make a living without being allowed to work.
“How do you expect us to survive?” Diana asked Rodriguez. “We had nothing, and then we tried to leave and the National Guard beat us up.”
