JUAREZ — María de los Angeles Croce sleeps outside an immigration assistance agency’s office with a view of the U.S. border fence after U.S. Border Patrol deported her and about 500 other Venezuelan immigrants. I woke up to another day of terrifying uncertainty.
Dozens of Venezuelans are asking unanswered questions on Saturday morning. where do they sleep and where do they eat? what will they do next? During the deportation, Mexican authorities required the 25-year-old woman and others to sign a document saying they would leave the country “by their own means” within 15 days. But how? And where can she go?
What she experienced on her six-week overland journey from South America could fill the darkest chapters of García Márquez’s novel. She said she was overwhelmed by the failure of her efforts.
“I kept doing it, but now I had to do a lot of things I didn’t want to talk about. I had to pay,” she said. “I didn’t know what I could do”
Holding back tears, she continued.
De los Angeles Croce and others lined up for hot coffee. Baptist missionaries from Venezuela brought tall silver bowls to the outside corner of the Migrant Attention Center in Chihuahua. It’s a lonely space, where railroad tracks bend west to cross the U.S. border, and the concrete embankments of the Rio Grande Canal are littered with the remains of immigrants. A U.S. border fence covered in razor wire blocks the view of El Paso.
Jairo Mendoza said a prayer with a black bible in his hand.”El Pueblo VenezoranoHe converted for a few minutes and promised to return in the evening, presumably in Venezuelan fashion. Arepas,corn Masa Pockets often contain chicken or black beans and fresh white cheese.
“We have followed their journey,” he said. “And we knew many of them would end up here when the law changed.”
“This is a real social and economic crisis in Venezuela,” said Mendoza, who left Venezuela in 2013. “He earns less than $40 a month there, but he needs $300 or $400 to eat. It is very difficult for our people to live.”
On Thursday, the Biden administration and Mexico announced a joint deal to slow the flow of migrants through the region. The number of Venezuelans seeking asylum on the U.S.-Mexico border began to surge in September, threatening a humanitarian crisis in U.S. border cities, including El Paso.
Mexico agreed to take back the repatriated Venezuelans under Title 42. Title 42 is a US public health agency used throughout the pandemic to expedite the return of immigrants to their countries of origin, possibly Mexico. The United States has agreed to provide a Mexican, Central American and Haiti worker with an additional 65,000 temporary work visas for her through air travel in Mexico where she can show proof of her sponsorship in the United States. We also agreed to accept up to 24,000 Venezuelan immigrants.
This is the latest move to resort to a deportation policy that the Biden administration has publicly eschewed, but continues to use it as a stick to push immigrants back from the Southwest border. Just as he accused Biden of so-called “open-border” policies ahead of the midterm elections, the new evictions signaled the administration’s tougher stance on the recent influx of immigrants.
In El Paso, the municipal government busses hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants (who are legally allowed to pursue status in the U.S.) to New York and Chicago every day to try to keep them from becoming homeless on the streets. .
The humanitarian crisis at the border has now spilled over into Juárez, a Mexican city accustomed to hosting foreigners deported by the United States. This weekend, Border Patrol deported as many as 50 of her asylum seekers, her 30 minutes at a time, onto Stanton Street. International bridge..
Juarez has seen thousands of Cubans, Central Americans and Haitians set up temporary settlements here over the years of the Trump-era Immigration Protection Protocol. The Mexican government gave them work permits and many got jobs in Mexico. Maquiladora With seed money from relatives working in the US, he started an assembly plant and his own business.
Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez staves off the immigration crisis in El Paso. Will the next chief do the same?
The order by the Mexican government handed over to hundreds of deported Venezuelans on Friday surprised shelter and migrant aid workers. With little funding and often no close contacts within the United States to provide financial assistance, how can immigrants “give up Mexican territory at the nearest southern border”? was not clear.
Enrique Valenzuela, director of Chihuahua’s immigration aid agency, said local, state and federal officials are expected to meet later Saturday as the number of deported Venezuelans is expected to rise. .
“The information we have now is generating more questions and questions than answers for those who need to make decisions about the future.
Mendoza said he is asking his compatriots to change their minds. He said there are also job opportunities in Mexico. Especially in Juarez, hundreds of factories are always looking for more workers. But Mexico needs to offer opportunities, he said.
“People who want to work should be given the opportunity to live easily in this country,” he said. “Venezuelas are hard workers. The Mexican government should give them the same opportunities it gave others.”
Juan Carlos Quevedo, 31, had his head bowed as he listened to Mendoza’s impromptu sermon. He worked as a fisherman in the coastal state of Falcon, a country with huge oil reserves that was once one of the wealthiest in the region, and was one of the richest of the boats he worked on. I can’t afford to buy gasoline and can no longer find it.
He crossed the border hours before the U.S.-Mexico agreement, was returned to Juarez by border agents on Friday, and was unsure of what to do next. He had a backpack filled with rolls of toilet paper and a plastic bag containing the only thing he had since leaving Venezuela: a palm-sized laminated card depicting Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico. had a
“It’s all we’ve done to get here,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.
